What Does 1 Samuel 1:14 Mean?
And Eli said to her, How long will you be drunk? Turn aside your wine from you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken? put away thy wine from thee.THE KEY
Eli’s command exposes how a confident diagnosis can mistake visible grief for drunkenness.
THE MEANING
Eli reads Hannah’s visible distress as drunkenness and tells her to put her wine away. His confident label reveals the distance between seeing a sign and knowing what a person carries.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that outward behavior gives certain access to another person’s inner state: Hannah’s next words say she has drunk neither wine nor strong drink and has poured out her soul before the LORD.
THE ROOT
תִּשְׁתַּכָּרִין
tishtakkarin
GROWS FROM
שכר
sh-k-r
To be or become drunk; intoxicated.
The root of “drunken” also forms שֵׁכָר (shekhar, strong or intoxicating drink), bringing intoxication and intoxicant into one word family. Yet this verse uses יַיִן (yayin, wine) for the drink, so Eli’s sentence records his assumption without proving it.
ALSO GROWS
shekhar: Strong or intoxicating drink.
שֵׁכָר
This branch shares the root of “drunken,” joining the state Eli names with an intoxicating drink.
shikkor: A drunk or intoxicated person.
שִׁכּוֹר
This branch names a person by the same root, showing how the root can describe both intoxication and the one experiencing it.
תָּסִירִי
tasiri
GROWS FROM
סור
s-w-r
To turn aside or depart; in this verb form, to remove or take away.
“turn aside” in this verse is tasiri. Eli tells Hannah to make the wine depart from her. The root’s language of turning aside sharpens the command: he presents removal of the alleged drink as the answer to the state he has assigned her.
ALSO GROWS
sur: To turn aside or depart.
סוּר
The basic verb reveals the movement underneath “put away”: something is made to leave its place.
hesir: To remove or take away.
הֵסִיר
This causative form shares the root and shows the direct act of making something depart.
THE PATTERN
Outward signs invite confident labels, but they do not disclose the heart.
But the LORD said to Samuel, Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, for I have pushed him away. The LORD does not see as the human sees. The human sees what is outside, but the LORD sees the heart.The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, Look, a gluttonous man and a wine drinker, a friend of tax collectors and of those who miss the mark!Do not judge by what the eye sees, but judge the judgment of alignment.THE THREAD
And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord. I am a woman of hard breath. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have poured out my living soul before the LORD.Hannah answers Eli’s accusation directly: she has drunk neither wine nor strong drink; she has poured out her נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh, living soul) before the LORD. Her words reveal what Eli’s reading misses: the visible sign comes from sorrow, not wine.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us