What Does 1 Samuel 14:28 Mean?
Then one of the people answered and said, Your father bound the people tightly with an oath, saying, Cursed be the man who eats bread this day. And the people were spent.
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 answered one of the people, and said, Thy father straitly charged the people with an oath, saying, Cursed be the man that eateth any food this day. And the people were faint.THE KEY
The oath meant to secure obedience leaves the people too faint to carry its cost.
THE MEANING
The command binds the people to go without food, and their bodies grow faint under it. The oath’s force reaches beyond the speaker: the crowd bears its cost in lost strength.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a command is harmless because it is binding or meant to serve a purpose breaks here: the people grow faint under it.
THE ROOT
הַשְׁבֵּעַ הִשְׁבִּיעַ
hashbea hishbia
GROWS FROM
שׁבע
to swear, bind by an oath
“bound tightly” in this verse is hashbea hishbia. The Hebrew repeats the act of swearing: literally, “swearing, he made [them] swear.” That intensifies the oath’s force; it is a binding vow that reaches every person in the crowd.
ALSO GROWS
shevuʿah: oath
שְׁבוּעָה
This noun names the binding vow at the center of the command.
nishbaʿ: swore, took an oath
נִשְׁבַּע
This form shows the same root as the act of entering an oath.
וַיָּעַף
wayyaʿaph
GROWS FROM
יעף
to grow weary, become faint
“spent” in this verse is wayyaʿaph. The verse names the people’s bodily exhaustion, not merely discouragement. The same root appears for weariness elsewhere, making the physical cost of the oath plain.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāyēp̄: weary, tired
עָיֵף
This adjective describes the exhausted state the crowd reaches under the food restriction.
ʿăyēp̄ût: weariness, exhaustion
עֲיֵפוּת
This noun carries the root’s sense of depleted strength that the verse shows in the people.
THE PATTERN
A burden imposed without regard for human need drains the strength it demands.
Let the work weigh heavier on the men, that they may labor in it, and let them not look at lying words.For they tie up heavy loads, hard to lift, and lay them on the shoulders of people, but they themselves will not move them, even with one of their fingers.Now therefore why do you test God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the learners, which neither our fathers nor we were strong enough to carry?THE THREAD
And Gideon came to the Jordan and crossed over, he and the three hundred men who were with him, faint and pursuing.The Hebrew word translated “faint” comes from the same root, יעף, as the people’s exhaustion here. In both verses, the word keeps bodily weariness in view, making the people’s lost strength part of the meaning.
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