What Does 1 Samuel 14:15 Mean?
And there was trembling in the camp, in the field, and among all the people. The standing post and the ravagers, they also trembled, and the land shook, and it became a trembling of God.
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 there was trembling in the host, in the field, and among all the people: the garrison, and the spoilers, they also trembled, and the earth quaked: so it was a very great trembling.THE KEY
The disturbance spreads from the soldiers’ bodies into the earth itself, as though fear has become something the whole scene can feel.
THE MEANING
Fear here is not kept inside one person: it spreads through a crowd and reaches the ground beneath it. The Hebrew moves from alarm in people to agitation in the earth, then returns to the language of trembling to name the whole scene as overwhelming. Inner response and outer upheaval occupy the same moment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that power can keep its fear contained within its own ranks is undone: here the trembling escapes the people and reaches the ground.
THE ROOT
חֲרָדָה
charadah
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ד
To tremble or be alarmed.
The verb for the people’s trembling and the repeated noun share this same root: Hebrew keeps the act and the condition connected. The closing חֲרָדַת אֱלֹהִים (charadat elohim, a great trembling of God) intensifies that shared root into an overwhelming disturbance.
ALSO GROWS
charad: To tremble, be alarmed.
חָרַד
This verb describes the people’s response, keeping their trembling tied to the same root as the verse’s repeated noun.
chared: One who trembles; fearful.
חָרֵד
This form names a person by the trembling they experience, making fear an embodied state rather than an abstract idea.
רָגַז
ragaz
GROWS FROM
ר־ג־ז
To quake, shake, or become agitated.
“land shook” in this verse is ragaz. English makes the people’s trembling and the earth’s quake sound like the same action, but the verse uses two roots: one for alarm in people, another for agitation in the earth. It then returns to the first root in its closing phrase, folding the earth’s quake into the same overwhelming disturbance.
ALSO GROWS
ragaz: To tremble, quake, or become agitated.
רָגַז
This verb describes the earth’s movement, extending the disturbance from people to the ground.
rogez: Tumult, agitation, or trouble.
רֹגֶז
The noun carries the same root’s sense of upheaval, illuminating how the earth’s movement belongs to a wider disturbance.
THE PATTERN
When a force overwhelms a scene, its shaking reaches beyond people into the ground and the structures that hold them.
And Mount Sinai smoked all over, because the LORD came down upon it in fire, and its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount trembled greatly.The LORD reigns; let the peoples tremble. He sits between the cherubim; let the earth sway.And suddenly there came a great shaking, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and at once all the doors were opened, and every one's bonds were untied.THE THREAD
And Mount Sinai smoked all over, because the LORD came down upon it in fire, and its smoke went up like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount trembled greatly.Exodus uses חָרַד (charad, to tremble) for Sinai’s movement, the same root that names trembling here. In this verse the shaking runs through a camp and into the earth; there it reaches the mountain, making the landscape part of the response.
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