What Does 1 Samuel 14:5 Mean?
The one tooth from the north, facing Michmash, and the other from the south, facing Gibeah.
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
The forefront of the one was situate northward over against Michmash, and the other southward over against Gibeah.THE KEY
The “forefront” is a tooth of rock: two projecting edges mark the passage.
THE MEANING
Your way through can have two hard edges facing across it and still remain a way. The boundaries do not erase the opening between them; they give it shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The way does not have to wait for every obstacle to disappear before it can exist.
THE ROOT
שֵׁן
shen
GROWS FROM
שׁנן
To sharpen or whet.
“one tooth” in this verse is shen. The Hebrew word translated “forefront” is literally “tooth,” giving the crags the shape of sharp projections. The same word-family carries the sense of sharpening, so the English hides how pointedly these two edges define the passage.
ALSO GROWS
shen: Tooth; also a sharp rock or crag.
שֵׁן
The crag is pictured as a tooth jutting into the terrain.
veshinnantam: “You shall sharpen them,” rendered “teach them diligently” in Deuteronomy 6:7.
וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם
The shared sharpening image echoes the pointedness of the rock edges.
גִּבְעָה
gibʿah
GROWS FROM
גבע
g-b-ʿ
Hill or raised ground.
Gibeah names the landform itself: the hill. Alongside the “tooth” of rock, the place name keeps the verse’s terrain in view.
ALSO GROWS
gibʿah: Hill; the form behind the name Gibeah.
גִּבְעָה
The name makes the elevated terrain part of the verse’s meaning.
gevaʿ: Hill; the related form behind the place name Geba.
גֶּבַע
The related form shows the same hill-language recurring in place names.
THE PATTERN
A way through can be held between opposing boundaries and still open toward life and breadth.
And the children of Israel came into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them, on their right hand and on their left.From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.For narrow is the gate, and pressed in is the way that leads to life, and few are those who find it.THE THREAD
Between the crossings by which Jonathan sought to cross over to the standing post of the Philistines, there was a tooth of rock on the one side, and a tooth of rock on the other side, and the name of the one was Bozez, and the name of the other Seneh.This verse identifies the two crags as edges of a passage. Hebrew repeats שֵׁן (shen, “tooth”) in both verses, while the KJV renders the image as “sharp rock” in verse 4 and “forefront” in verse 5.
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