What Does 1 Samuel 2:23 Mean?
And he said to them, Why do you do according to these things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all this people.
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 he said unto them, Why do ye such things? for I hear of your evil dealings by all this people.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats the same word-family for the “things” the sons do and the “dealings” Eli hears about, binding conduct to the report it creates.
THE MEANING
When conduct harms a community, it becomes part of what people see, say, and hear. The verse holds the actions and the shared witness of them together: the harm is no longer private to the people who caused it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that harmful conduct stays contained within the doer; here, the community carries the report into the open.
THE ROOT
כַּדְּבָרִים
ka-devarim
GROWS FROM
דבר
D-B-R
Speak; as a noun, a word, matter, or thing.
“according to these things” in this verse is ka-devarim. The same dabar word-family appears in both phrases, though English renders it as “things” and “dealings.” The repeated root draws the sons’ conduct and the matter Eli hears about into one line: what they do becomes what the people report.
ALSO GROWS
davar: A word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
This noun’s range joins the verse’s “things” and “dealings” under the same Hebrew word-family.
dibber: To speak or utter.
דִּבֵּר
The verb branch links the matter being reported with speech that carries it through the community.
שֹׁמֵעַ
shomea
GROWS FROM
שמע
Sh-M-ʿ
Hear, listen, heed.
““hear”” in this verse is shomea. Eli’s “I hear” is receiving a report, while the same root can carry the sense of listening with heed. The next verse sharpens this range: his sons do not heed their father’s voice.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: To hear, listen, or heed.
שָׁמַע
It holds hearing together with responsiveness, a dimension that becomes pointed when the sons refuse their father’s voice.
shemuʿah: A report, news, or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This noun shows how hearing becomes a report passed between people, as in Eli’s account of what he has heard.
THE PATTERN
Harm within a community becomes a report that reaches a hearer who can name it.
And the LORD said, Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their falling short is very heavy.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
If one man misses the mark against another, God will judge him; but if a man misses against the LORD, who will pray for him? Yet they would not hear and respond to the voice of their father, because the LORD delighted to slay them.The root שמע (shamaʿ, hear or heed) links Eli’s “I hear” in verse 23 with the sons who “hearkened not” in verse 25. The scene turns on a sharp contrast: the community’s report reaches Eli, but his sons do not heed the voice confronting them.
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