What Does 1 Samuel 1:25 Mean?
And they slaughtered the young bull, and brought the boy to Eli.
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 they slew a bullock, and brought the child to Eli.THE KEY
The verb “brought” means “caused to come,” so Samuel’s dedication takes the form of an arrival into Eli’s presence.
THE MEANING
The scene speaks now of a promise embodied: a bull is slaughtered, and the boy is brought to Eli. Eli’s name, עֵלִי (ʿEli), means “my God,” giving the destination a name of relationship. Dedication appears here as a concrete arrival with a cost.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a promise is complete once it is spoken; here, fulfillment has a visible body and destination.
THE ROOT
וַיָּבִאוּ
wayyavi'u
GROWS FROM
בוא
Come, enter, arrive; in this causative form, cause to come or bring.
The form וַיָּבִאוּ (wayyavi’u, “they brought”) is built from בוא (bôʾ, “come, enter”) in a causative form: they cause the boy to come. The verse gives dedication a direction: Samuel arrives in Eli’s presence, so the act carries both a destination and a relationship.
ALSO GROWS
bo: To come, enter, arrive
בּוֹא
This is the root’s basic movement; its causative form describes the family making Samuel come into Eli’s presence.
mavo: Entrance, entry
מָבוֹא
This noun names a point of entry, illuminating “brought” as movement toward arrival.
THE PATTERN
A vowed gift becomes visible when it is carried into the place where it is dedicated.
When you vow a vow to God, do not linger to make it whole. For there is no delight in the thick-headed. Make whole what you have vowed.I make whole my vows to the LORD, now in front of all his people.And when the days of her cleansing according to the instruction of Moses were filled, they brought him up to Jerusalem, to stand him beside the Lord.THE THREAD
And out of the ground the LORD God shaped every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called every living soul, that was its name.Genesis 2:19 uses the same root, בוא (bôʾ, “come, enter”), for the LORD bringing the creatures to Adam (אָדָם, ʾĀdām, “the ground-being”). In both verses, bringing describes an arrival into another’s presence; Genesis adds the moment when Adam names what arrives.
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