What Does 1 Samuel 17:7 Mean?
And the wood of his spear was like a weaver's beam, and the point of his spear weighed six hundred shekels of iron, and one who carries the shield walked before him.
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 the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.THE KEY
The giant’s menace is not one body but a fighting apparatus: a beam-like spear, measured iron, and another person carrying his shield.
THE MEANING
A threat that fills your vision arrives with more than one body: its weapon has weight, and someone else carries its defense. The verse makes the supports of that force visible. What confronts you has people and objects upholding it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that an overwhelming force is self-sufficient. Here its strength visibly depends on a carrier and a shield as well as the armed man.
THE ROOT
נֹשֵׂא
nōśēʾ
GROWS FROM
נשׂא
n-ś-ʾ
To lift, carry, or bear; in some uses, to take away.
“carries” in this verse is nōśēʾ. The shield does not carry itself: the verse gives its bearing to another person. The same root names both the act of carrying and a burden, making the carrier part of the giant’s visible force.
ALSO GROWS
maśśāʾ: A load or burden.
מַשָּׂא
This noun comes from the same root: the bearer and what is borne belong to one word-family.
nāśîʾ: A prince or leader, traditionally understood as one lifted up.
נָשִׂיא
The same lifting image can name a person raised into prominence, linking the one who bears with the one held up before others.
THE PATTERN
What appears to belong to one figure is often carried, held, or sustained by others.
But Moses' hands were heavy. And they took a stone and set it under him, and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on this side and the other on that side, and his hands were steady until the sun went down.And as they led him away, they took hold of a man named Simon, a Cyrenian, coming from the field, and they laid the cross on him, that he might carry it behind Jesus.Carry one another's weights, and so you fill up the instruction of the Anointed One.THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.The shield-bearer is described with נֹשֵׂא (nōśēʾ), from נשׂא (n-ś-ʾ), “to bear”; Isaiah uses that same root in “he hath borne.” Here the bearer carries a weapon’s defense; there, he bears griefs, revealing how much the identity of the carrier changes what is being carried.
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