What Does 1 Samuel 19:16 Mean?
And when the messengers came in, look, there was an image in the bed, with a pillow of goats' hair for his bolster.
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 when the messengers were come in, behold, there was an image in the bed, with a pillow of goats’ hair for his bolster.THE KEY
A substitute can fill the bed and still leave the person absent.
THE MEANING
The messengers enter, and what meets their eyes is an image in the place where a living person is expected. The detail at the head-place shows how the appearance is arranged to stand in for someone. The verse lets the image and the person come apart.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A convincing arrangement is not the living person it represents; the space occupied by an image can still be empty of the person expected.
THE ROOT
מְרַאֲשֹׁתָיו
mĕraʾăšōtāw
GROWS FROM
רֹאשׁ
rosh
Head, top, or chief; related forms can also mean beginning or first.
The Hebrew word rendered “bolster” locates the goats’ hair at the head-place. From rosh, which also names what is chief or first, the wording places part of the staged appearance where a person’s head is expected, helping an image occupy the place of a living presence.
ALSO GROWS
rosh: Head, top, or chief.
רֹאשׁ
The head-place in the verse is where the image is positioned to resemble someone lying in the bed.
reshit: Beginning or first.
רֵאשִׁית
This related form carries the sense of what comes first; here, the head is the leading feature by which the body is imagined.
THE PATTERN
An appearance can be shaped to impersonate a presence, while its constructed features reveal the gap between image and person.
And Jacob drew near to Isaac his father, and he felt him, and said, The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau.And no marvel, for the Adversary himself is reshaped into a messenger of light.And Saul said to Michal, Why have you thrown me off like this, and sent my enemy away, so that he has slipped away? And Michal answered Saul, He said to me, Send me away; why should I kill you?THE THREAD
And Michal took an image, and set it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats' hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth.The verse just before this one describes the image being placed in the bed and the goats’ hair set at the head-place. The shared Hebrew head-word shows that the messengers encounter a deliberately arranged stand-in, not a living person.
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