What Does 1 Samuel 21:3 Mean?
Now, then, what is under your hand? Give me five loaves of bread in my hand, or whatever is found.
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
Now therefore what is under thine hand? give me five loaves of bread in mine hand, or what there is present.THE KEY
Three mentions of the hand make provision a transfer: what is within one person’s reach can be placed within another’s.
THE MEANING
Your need can be named plainly, while the answer remains open to what is actually available. The repeated hand places provision between what someone holds and what another can receive. Even the request for five loaves makes room for whatever is found.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Help must arrive in precisely the form requested. The phrase “or what there is present” leaves room for what is available to meet the need.
THE ROOT
תְּנָה
tenah
GROWS FROM
נתן
natan
give, set, place
The request uses a form of נָתַן (natan), meaning “give, set, place.” With the repeated hand, giving becomes a concrete movement: bread is placed within another’s reach.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: gift, present
מַתָּנָה
A gift is something given and placed into another’s keeping.
nittan: was given, was placed
נִתַּן
This form makes visible the receiving side of the same movement.
הַנִּמְצָא
hanimtsa
GROWS FROM
מצא
matsa
find, encounter, be found
The final phrase points to “what is found,” not just an abstract supply. The root מצא (matsa), meaning “find, encounter,” shifts the focus from a fixed quantity to what is actually present and within reach.
ALSO GROWS
matsa: to find, discover
מָצָא
It names the act behind recognizing what is available.
nimtsa: be found, be present
נִמְצָא
It carries the sense of what can be located and received.
THE PATTERN
Provision becomes shareable when what is already in someone’s keeping is placed before another’s need.
And there came a man from Baalshalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and fresh ears of grain in their husks. And he said, Give to the people, that they may eat.And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and spoke good over them, and broke the loaves and gave them to his disciples to set before them, and the two fish he divided among them all.THE THREAD
So the priest gave him set-apart bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the faces, which was removed from before the LORD, to set in hot bread on the day it was taken away.The verb behind “gave” here shares נָתַן (natan), meaning “give, set, place,” with the request in 1 Samuel 21:3. The open-ended request for what is present finds its answer in bread placed into David’s hand.
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