What Does 1 Samuel 20:28 Mean?
And Jonathan answered Saul, David earnestly asked of me to go to Bethlehem.
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 Jonathan answered Saul, David earnestly asked leave of me to go to Beth-lehem:THE KEY
The Hebrew doubles “asked,” and Saul’s name means “asked for,” so the request echoes in the name of the one who hears it.
THE MEANING
You hear a desire for movement carried through another person’s voice: David asks Jonathan, and Jonathan brings the request before Saul. The Hebrew doubles “asked,” giving the request emphasis, while Bethlehem means “house of bread,” so the destination carries the image of nourishment.
THE ROOT
שָׁאֹל שָׁאַל
sha'ol sha'al
GROWS FROM
שאל
To ask, request, or inquire.
“earnestly asked of me” in this verse is sha'ol sha'al. The phrase repeats the root in an infinitive absolute followed by a finite verb, “asking, David asked”, a Hebrew construction that adds emphasis, rendered here as “earnestly.” Saul’s name, שָׁאוּל (Sha’ul, “asked for”), comes from the same root, making the line resonate around asking.
ALSO GROWS
Sha'ul: Asked for; requested.
שָׁאוּל
Saul’s name shares the root of David’s repeated asking, so the act of asking echoes in the name of the one receiving the report.
she'iltiv: I asked for him from the LORD.
שְׁאִלְתִּיו
Hannah uses this same root in 1 Samuel 1:20; her words connect asking with the child she receives.
THE PATTERN
A request brings desire into the open and places it before a possible response.
For this child I prayed, and the LORD has given me the request I asked of him.Ask of me, and I give you the nations for your inheritance, and the far edges of the earth as what your hands grasp.Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.THE THREAD
When the days had come around, Hannah conceived and bore a son, and called his name Samuel, the asked-for one, saying, Because I have asked him of the LORD.Jonathan’s report uses the root שאל (sha’al, “ask”) for David’s emphatic request; Hannah uses that same root when she says she has asked for her child from the LORD. The shared root ties asking to what is received.
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