What Does 1 Samuel 15:33 Mean?
Samuel said, As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be made childless among women. And Samuel hacked Agag into pieces before the face of the LORD in Gilgal.
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 Samuel said, As thy sword hath made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the LORD in Gilgal.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats the same verb for the sword’s victims and Agag’s mother, making retaliation reproduce the bereavement it names.
THE MEANING
The sword has made women childless; now the same bereavement is spoken over Agag’s mother. The last sentence gives the judgment a body: Samuel hacks Agag apart before the LORD at Gilgal. Grief and retaliatory violence remain in the same frame.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that retaliation ends violence cleanly: the answer to Agag’s sword repeats bereavement, then ends with another act of brutal violence.
THE ROOT
שִׁכְּלָה
shikkelah
GROWS FROM
שׁכל
sh-k-l
To bereave or deprive someone of children.
“made childless” in this verse is shikkelah. The verse first uses שִׁכְּלָה (shikkelah) for what Agag’s sword did to women, then תִּשְׁכַּל (tishkal) for what will happen to his mother. The same root turns the inflicted loss into the named consequence.
ALSO GROWS
shikkel: To bereave or deprive of children.
שִׁכֵּל
This verb names the harm attributed to Agag’s sword.
shakul: Bereaved; deprived of children.
שָׁכוּל
This form names the state imposed on Agag’s mother.
חַרְבֶּךָ
charbekha
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
To become dry or desolate; to lay waste.
The consonants ח־ר־ב also appear in Hebrew words for desolation. The verse’s sword is bound to the ruin it leaves behind: women bereaved, and a mother facing the same loss.
ALSO GROWS
charav: To dry up or become desolate.
חָרַב
This verb shares the consonants associated with the sword and gives the word a shade of devastation.
chorbah: Ruin; desolation.
חָרְבָּה
This noun makes explicit the desolation echoed by the sword’s consequences.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives violence a returning shape: the harm inflicted comes back upon the one who inflicts it.
Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,Then Jesus said to him, Turn your sword back to its place, for all who take up the sword will perish by the sword.THE THREAD
until your brother's anger has turned back from you, and he forgets what you did to him; then I will send and take you from there. Why should I be made childless, also both of you, in one day?The word translated “deprived” comes from the same Hebrew root, שׁכל (sh-k-l), used for “made childless” here. In Genesis it voices a mother’s fear of losing her children; in Samuel, that root names the bereavement pronounced over Agag’s mother.
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