What Does 1 Samuel 15:25 Mean?
Now then, please release my falling short, and turn back with me, that I may bow down to the LORD.
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, I pray thee, pardon my sin, and turn again with me, that I may worship the LORD.THE KEY
Pardon is voiced as lifting the missing from its bearer, so forgiveness appears as a burden being lifted.
THE MEANING
When you ask for pardon, this verse gives the request a shape: you name the miss and ask for its burden to be lifted. The speaker also asks another to return alongside him, with bowing before the LORD as the stated aim. Confession, company, and worship remain connected without becoming interchangeable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that worship can skip past a named failure: here, the request to bow before the LORD follows the plea for pardon.
THE ROOT
שָׂא־נָא
śāʾ-nāʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
n-ś-ʾ
Lift, carry, bear.
“release” in this verse is śāʾ-nāʾ. The Hebrew verb behind “pardon” gives the plea an image of lifting or bearing what weighs on the speaker. English names the result; the root also lets you see the action.
ALSO GROWS
nəśûy: Lifted or borne; used of transgression forgiven.
נְשׂוּי
Psalm 32:1 uses this form for transgression that is forgiven, bringing the same image of lifting into the language of pardon.
maśśāʾ: A burden or load.
מַשָּׂא
A burden is what gets carried; this branch makes the weight implied in the plea concrete.
חַטָּאתִי
ḥaṭṭāʾtî
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
Miss, fail, miss the mark.
“falling short” in this verse is ḥaṭṭāʾtî. The word makes the failure specific: a miss, rather than an undefined stain. That named missing is the very thing the plea asks to have lifted.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss or fail.
חָטָא
The verb keeps the sense of an action that falls short, beneath the noun translated “sin.”
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Sin or, in sacrificial contexts, a sin offering.
חַטָּאת
The same word can name both the missing and an offering for the missing, linking what is brought before God to the failure it addresses.
וְאֶשְׁתַּחֲוֶה
veʾeštaḥăweh
GROWS FROM
שחה
š-ḥ-h
Bow low, prostrate oneself.
“bow down” in this verse is veʾeštaḥăweh. The stated aim is bodily: the speaker intends to bow before the LORD. The root keeps that posture visible inside the broader English word “worship.”
ALSO GROWS
hishtachavah: To bow oneself or prostrate oneself.
הִשְׁתַּחֲוָה
This form makes the lowering of the body explicit in the act described as worship.
mishtachaveh: One who bows down.
מִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה
The related form names the person through the posture, keeping the physical act at the center.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures pardon as lifting and bearing what a person cannot simply declare absent.
Guarding faithful love for thousands, carrying crookedness, rebellion, and falling short, and who by no means leaves the guilty clean, visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth generation.A Psalm of David, Maschil. Flourishing is the one whose rebellion is released, whose shortcomings are covered.Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the plunder with the strong, because he poured out his living soul to death, and was counted with the rebels. He carried the falling short of many, and for the rebels he stepped in.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David, Maschil. Flourishing is the one whose rebellion is released, whose shortcomings are covered.The Hebrew word translated “forgiven” comes from the same נשא root as “pardon” here: to lift, carry, or bear. The Psalm makes that hidden image plain, a transgression can be lifted from the one who bears it.
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