What Does 1 Samuel 20:10 Mean?
Then David said to Jonathan, Who shall tell me? Or what if your father answers you harshly?
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
Then said David to Jonathan, Who shall tell me? or what if thy father answer thee roughly?THE KEY
The word translated “roughly” means “hard,” so David fears an answer whose hardness may itself make truth difficult to receive.
THE MEANING
When you are waiting for an answer from someone close to you, uncertainty can arrive before the answer itself. The question names the risk plainly: the response may come hard, and that hardness can shape what you are able to hear. The verse leaves that possibility open instead of pretending every truth arrives gently.
THE ROOT
קָשֶׁה
qasheh
GROWS FROM
קשה
q-sh-h
To be hard, severe, or difficult.
“harshly” in this verse is qasheh. The Hebrew describes the answer as hard, not merely as having a rough tone. The same root reaches from harshness to difficulty: hardness can make a way forward feel obstructed.
ALSO GROWS
qashah: To be hard or severe; to make hard.
קָשָׁה
The verb shows the force beneath the adjective: hardness is something that can press upon or obstruct.
qasheh: Hard, harsh, or difficult.
קָשֶׁה
This adjective describes the answer Jonathan may receive from his father.
יַגִּיד
yaggid
GROWS FROM
נגד
n-g-d
To make known, announce, or report.
“tell” in this verse is yaggid. The question is not only who might speak, but who will make the hidden answer known to David. The root carries the sense of bringing information into view, which makes the uncertainty about access to truth as central as the feared reply.
ALSO GROWS
nagad: To tell, report, or declare.
נָגַד
This is the verbal root behind “tell,” the act David needs in order to know the answer.
neged: In front of, opposite, or before.
נֶגֶד
The related word evokes something brought into view; the report would place the answer before David.
nagid: Leader or ruler.
נָגִיד
The related title carries the image of one who stands before others, echoing the root’s language of what is brought forward.
THE PATTERN
The way a response is given can either soften conflict or make truth harder to receive.
A soft answer turns away the burning, but words of pain stir up the nostrils.Know this, my beloved brothers. Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to swell.but doing the truth in love, we may grow into him in all things, who is the head, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
And they made their lives bitter with hard service, in clay and in brick, and in all the labor of the field; every service they made them serve was with crushing.The phrase “hard bondage” uses the same q-sh-h root as “roughly” here. The shared word reveals hardness as more than a sound or tone: it names a force that makes life difficult to move through.
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