What Does 1 Samuel 12:13 Mean?
Now then, look, the king whom you have chosen, the one you asked for. Look, the LORD has set a king over 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
Now therefore behold the king whom ye have chosen, and whom ye have desired! and, behold, the LORD hath set a king over you.THE KEY
The king’s name, Saul, means “asked for”: the answer to the people’s request now stands over them.
THE MEANING
The request has taken the form of a ruler: the king is the one the people asked for, now placed over them. The verse holds desire, choice, and authority together, showing how what is asked for can become the reality that governs.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that getting what you ask for is automatically freedom: the answer can become the authority over you.
THE ROOT
שְׁאֶלְתֶּם
she’altém
GROWS FROM
שאל
ask, request
The Hebrew carries the sense “whom you asked for.” Saul (שָׁאוּל, Sha’ul) is formed from this same root and means “asked for,” so the king’s name echoes the people’s request.
ALSO GROWS
Sha’ul: asked for
שָׁאוּל
The name describes the king as the request made flesh.
she’elah: request, question
שְׁאֵלָה
This noun from the same root makes the act of asking explicit in the verse’s “desired.”
נָתַן
natan
GROWS FROM
נתן
give, set, place
“has set” in this verse is natan. The Hebrew verb natan carries the sense of giving as well as setting or placing. The king is both the requested answer and something given a position over the people.
ALSO GROWS
mattān: gift, present
מַתָּן
This noun shares the root’s sense of giving, adding the shade of a received thing to the king who is placed over them.
netinah: giving, donation
נְתִינָה
This form names the act of giving and keeps the verse’s placement of the king connected to what is given.
THE PATTERN
A request can be granted in a form that carries consequences for the one who asks.
And he gave them their request, but sent thinness into their living soul.And you shall cry out in that day because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves; and the LORD will not answer you in that day.You ask, and do not take, because you ask badly, so that you may use it up upon your pleasures.THE THREAD
And he gave them their request, but sent thinness into their living soul.The Hebrew word translated “request” comes from the same root as “whom ye have desired” here: שאל, “ask.” The shared root links the asking to its fulfillment, while the verse names a cost that can come with the answer.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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