What Does 1 Samuel 11:14 Mean?
Then Samuel said to the people, Come, let us go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom there.
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
Then said Samuel to the people, Come, and let us go to Gilgal, and renew the kingdom there.THE KEY
The kingdom is renewed at Gilgal, a place whose name carries the image of something rolled away.
THE MEANING
What governs your life can be made new again through a shared beginning. At Gilgal, renewal stands beside the image of rolling away what burdens you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that renewal requires starting from nothing; this verse speaks of making an existing kingdom new again.
THE ROOT
וּנְחַדֵּשׁ
u-nechaddesh
GROWS FROM
חדש
ch-d-sh
To be new; to make new or renew.
“renew” in this verse is u-nechaddesh. The verb means more than preserving the kingdom as it is: its rule is made new again. Its sibling chodesh names the month or new moon, carrying the sense of a cycle beginning anew.
ALSO GROWS
chadash: New.
חָדָשׁ
The kingdom’s renewal draws on the same root as newness itself.
chodesh: Month; new moon.
חֹדֶשׁ
The name links newness with a recurring beginning.
גִּלְגָּל
Gilgal
GROWS FROM
גלל
g-l-l
To roll, roll away.
Gilgal carries the sound and sense of the rolling root galal. Joshua 5:9 connects the place’s name with reproach being rolled away, so this verse sets renewal beside the release of an old burden.
ALSO GROWS
galal: To roll; roll away.
גָּלַל
This root gives the name Gilgal its image of rolling.
galgal: Wheel; something rolling.
גַּלְגַּל
The related form keeps the sense of movement carried by the place name.
megillah: Scroll.
מְגִלָּה
A scroll is something rolled, another branch of the same root.
THE PATTERN
Renewal gives governing order a new beginning, inwardly and communally.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steady breath within me.And Jehoiada cut a covenant between the LORD and the king and the people, that they should be the LORD's people; and between the king also and the people.Do not take the shape of this age, but be reshaped by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test what is the good, well-pleasing, and complete will of God.THE THREAD
And the LORD said to Joshua, This day I have rolled away the taunt of Egypt from off you. Therefore the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day.Joshua 5:9 ties Gilgal’s name to the rolling away of reproach, using the same root carried by the place name. Here, the kingdom is renewed at Gilgal, joining newness with the image of an old burden rolled away.
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