What Does 1 Samuel 15:27 Mean?
As Samuel turned to go, Saul gripped the wing of his robe, and it tore.
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 as Samuel turned about to go away, he laid hold upon the skirt of his mantle, and it rent.THE KEY
The robe tears in the king’s grasp before Samuel names the kingdom’s tearing: the fabric exposes what the grip cannot hold together.
THE MEANING
A hand catches the edge of a departing mantle, and the fabric splits. The tear makes separation visible at the very point of grasp; the next verse names the deeper rupture as the kingdom torn from Saul. The scene holds the reader at the instant when holding on exposes what cannot be kept together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a firm grip can keep loss from coming is undone: Saul catches the robe, yet it tears in his hand.
THE ROOT
וַיִּקָּרַע
wayyiqqāraʿ
GROWS FROM
ק־ר־ע
q-r-ʿ
To tear open, split, or rend.
“tore” in this verse is wayyiqqāraʿ. English can make “rent” sound like an isolated accident, but the same root names both this tear in the cloth and the kingdom’s rupture in the next verse. It also appears in “rend your heart,” carrying the image from fabric to inward reality: what tears on the outside can disclose a deeper severance.
ALSO GROWS
qeraʿ: A tear or rupture.
קֶרַע
The garment’s opening is a physical instance of the root’s central image.
qirʿu: “Rend!”, the imperative used in Joel 2:13.
קִרְעוּ
The same root applies to the heart, linking a visible tear to an inward rupture.
THE PATTERN
A tear in what is visible can disclose a deeper rupture beneath it.
Samuel said to him, The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you.Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, Since this is done by you, and you have not guarded my covenant and my statutes, which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and will give it to your servant.Tear your heart and not your garments, and turn to the LORD your God, for he is of favor, compassionate, slow to flare, great in faithful love, and he relents of the harm.THE THREAD
Samuel said to him, The LORD has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this day, and has given it to a neighbor of yours, who is better than you.The Hebrew root qaraʿ (קָרַע), “to tear or rend,” appears in both verses: first the mantle tears, then Samuel says the kingdom is rent. The cloth’s rupture gives the reader a visible image for the separation named in the next line.
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