What Does 1 Samuel 10:6 Mean?
And the breath of the LORD will rush upon you, and you will prophesy with them, and you will be turned into another man.
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 the Spirit of the LORD will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.THE KEY
The LORD’s breath changes both the voice that speaks and the person from whom it speaks.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s breath comes upon you, opening speech beyond your ordinary capacity. That same breath reaches beyond what you say: you are turned into another person. The change comes upon you; it is not something you manufacture.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that you are fixed as the person you are dissolves here: the LORD’s breath can change both your expression and the person expressing it.
THE ROOT
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
Moving air: wind, breath, or spirit.
English separates “Spirit” from “breath,” but Hebrew uses one word, רוּחַ (ruach), for both. The LORD’s breath is the force that comes upon you, opens your speech, and accompanies your change.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Wind, moving air.
רוּחַ
This sense shows ruach as something that comes and moves, not only an abstract idea.
ruach: Breath, the air of life.
רוּחַ
This sense links the LORD’s coming breath with the voice and changed person in the verse.
נֶהְפַּכְתָּ
nehpakhta
GROWS FROM
הפך
Turn, overturn, transform.
The root can describe a turning over or an overturning, so “turned into another man” carries a sense of a real reversal in condition. The verse presents transformation as something that happens to you.
ALSO GROWS
nehpakhta: You were turned or transformed.
נֶהְפַּכְתָּ
This is the form used for the change in this verse.
wayyahafok: He overturned; he turned upside down.
וַיַּהֲפֹךְ
The same root can name a sweeping reversal, giving “turned” more force than a slight adjustment.
וְהִתְנַבִּיתָ
ve-hitnabbita
GROWS FROM
נבא
Prophesy; speak as a prophet.
“prophesy” in this verse is ve-hitnabbita. The act of prophesying and the prophet grow from the same root. The verse describes a voice opening into prophetic speech alongside a change in the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
navi: Prophet.
נָבִיא
The speaker named by this root is linked to the act of prophesying.
nevuah: Prophecy, prophetic utterance.
נְבוּאָה
This branch names the speech that opens when the LORD’s breath comes upon you.
THE PATTERN
When the LORD’s breath comes upon people, it opens speech beyond their ordinary voice.
And the LORD came down in a cloud, and spoke with him, and took from the breath that was upon him and set it upon the seventy elders. And when the breath settled upon them, they prophesied and did not stop.And it shall be afterward, that I will pour out my breath upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your elders will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.And they were all filled with the Set-Apart Breath, and began to speak in other tongues, as the breath gave them to speak out.THE THREAD
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, a very great army.The Hebrew רוּחַ (ruach, breath, wind, spirit) in Ezekiel is the same word translated “Spirit” here. The same breath is joined to prophetic speech and to bodies rising into a changed life.
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