What Does 1 Samuel 16:20 Mean?
And Jesse took a donkey carrying bread, a skin of wine, and a young goat, and sent them by the hand of David his son to Saul.
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 Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul.THE KEY
The beloved is sent as provision: David’s hand carries bread, wine, and a young life into Saul’s need.
THE MEANING
You are shown care arriving in a form you can receive: bread, wine, and a young goat move through David’s hand to Saul. David’s name carries belovedness, so the beloved arrives not as an idea but with material provision.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלַח
wayyishlach
GROWS FROM
שלח
send, send forth, release, let go
English “sent” can sound like bare dispatch, while the root holds movement outward and release. Here that movement takes shape in a hand carrying food to Saul; its branches also connect sending with the healing waters called Sent and with provision spread out on a table.
ALSO GROWS
Shiloach: sent forth; the name rendered Siloam in John 9:7
שִׁלֹחַ
The pool’s name is glossed “Sent,” connecting this sending with water through which a man comes to see.
shulchan: table; the spread place of provision
שֻׁלְחָן
The table gives provision a place to be extended and received, echoing the food carried to Saul.
דָּוִד
Dawid
GROWS FROM
דוד
beloved; beloved one
David’s name carries the nature of the beloved, not only an identity. In this verse, that name arrives in the same hand as food and wine, joining belovedness with tangible provision.
ALSO GROWS
dod: beloved; also uncle in some contexts
דּוֹד
The same consonants carry the sense of belovedness contained in David’s name.
dodi: my beloved
דּוֹדִי
This form makes the root’s belovedness explicit in a direct expression of relation.
THE PATTERN
Sending becomes restoration when what goes out reaches another place as tangible provision or healing.
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and fresh ears of grain in their husks. And he said, Give to the people, that they may eat.And he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, the Sent. So he went and washed, and came seeing.THE THREAD
And he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, the Sent. So he went and washed, and came seeing.“Sent” here and the name Siloam both carry the Hebrew root שָׁלַח (shalach, to send forth or release). In this verse, provision travels through David’s hand; in John, the sent waters become part of a man’s restored sight.
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