What Does 1 Samuel 2:6 Mean?
The LORD kills, and makes alive; he brings down to the grave, and brings up.
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
The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up.THE KEY
The grave is not a boundary beyond the LORD’s reach: the same verse that names being brought down also names being brought up.
THE MEANING
The verse names the LORD as the one who kills and makes alive, who brings down to the grave and brings up. Its paired movements place even the descent into death and the return from it within the LORD’s reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that once someone descends into death, no power can bring them back.
THE ROOT
וּמְחַיֶּה
u-mechayyeh
GROWS FROM
חיה
live, be alive
“makes alive” in this verse is u-mechayyeh. The verb for making alive grows from the same seed as the words for living and life. Beside the descent into Sheol and the ascent out of it, this root makes life a return to being alive, not an abstract quality.
ALSO GROWS
chai: living, alive
חַי
This adjective shares the verb’s root: the one made alive returns to the condition named by “living.”
chayyim: life
חַיִּים
The word for life and the act of making alive grow from the same seed.
וַיַּעַל
wayyaʿal
GROWS FROM
עלה
go up, ascend
“brings up” in this verse is wayyaʿal. The Hebrew verb carries the motion of ascent: the LORD causes someone to go up from the place of descent. English “bringeth up” can sound general, while the root keeps the upward movement in view.
ALSO GROWS
ʿōlāh: burnt offering; an offering that rises
עֹלָה
This offering-word shares the ascent root, preserving the sense of something going upward.
maʿăleh: ascent, upward movement
מַעֲלֶה
This noun makes the movement in “bringeth up” explicit: the verse describes an ascent from the grave.
מֵמִית
memit
GROWS FROM
מות
die, perish
“kills” in this verse is memit. The verb “killeth” and the noun for death grow from the same root. The verse sets this stark act directly beside חיה (chayah, live), holding death and life together in one claim.
ALSO GROWS
muth: to die
מוּת
This is the root verb behind the verse’s language of killing.
mavet: death
מָוֶת
The noun for death shares the verb’s root, linking the act of killing with the condition the verse names through the grave.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s reach extends into death and includes the act of bringing life back.
See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no God with me. I kill, and I make alive; I shatter, and I mend; and there is none who can snatch away from my hand.Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones, Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live.But if the breath of him who raised Jesus from the dead makes its home in you, then he who raised the Anointed One from the dead will also make your death-bound bodies alive through his breath that makes its home in you.THE THREAD
See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no God with me. I kill, and I make alive; I shatter, and I mend; and there is none who can snatch away from my hand.Deuteronomy uses the same roots: מוּת (muth, die) and חָיָה (chayah, live) in the pair “I kill, and I make alive.” Its next pair, “I wound, and I heal,” extends that declaration from death and life to injury and restoration.
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