What Does 1 Samuel 25:38 Mean?
About ten days later, the LORD struck Nabal, and he died.
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 it came to pass about ten days after, that the LORD smote Nabal, that he died.THE KEY
The Hebrew sets the fatal blow beside a name meaning “fool,” yet never says the name explains the death.
THE MEANING
This verse meets you with an unsoftened claim: the LORD strikes Nabal, and Nabal dies. The ten days mark a span whose details this sentence does not fill.
THE ROOT
וַיִּגֹּף
wayyiggōph
GROWS FROM
נגף
To strike or strike down; the same root also carries the sense of a plague.
“struck” in this verse is wayyiggōph. The verb translated “smote” belongs to a root that can describe striking down and the noun for a plague. The line holds a direct blow and an affliction in the same word-family, then states plainly that the outcome is death.
ALSO GROWS
nāgaph: To strike, strike down, or stumble against.
נָגַף
This verbal branch keeps the force of the LORD’s action visible in the verse.
maggēphāh: Plague, a striking affliction.
מַגֵּפָה
The same root can name both a blow and a wider affliction, deepening the force of “smote.”
נָבָל
nāḇāl
GROWS FROM
נבל
To be foolish or senseless; also to wither or fade.
Nabal’s name carries the sense “fool” and belongs to a root also used for withering. A related noun means “carcass,” an unnerving echo beside “that he died”; the echo sharpens the wording but does not explain his death.
ALSO GROWS
nāḇāl: A fool, a senseless one.
נָבָל
This is the word sense carried by Nabal’s name, giving the name itself a nature rather than leaving it as a label.
neḇēlāh: A carcass, a dead body.
נְבֵלָה
This related word places the root-family beside the verse’s death, without claiming that the name causes or justifies it.
THE PATTERN
These verses name divine judgment as a cause of bodily death, without softening the outcome.
And Er, Judah's firstborn, was evil in the eyes of the LORD, and the LORD struck him down.And the burning of the LORD's anger flared against Uzzah, and God struck him there for his straying, and there he died beside the ark of God.And at once the messenger of the LORD struck him, because he did not give God the weight, and he was eaten by worms and breathed out his last.THE THREAD
For the LORD will cross through to strike the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will leap over the opening, and will not give the ruiner leave to come into your houses to strike you.The verb is נָגַף (nāgaph, “to strike”) in both places: here it strikes Nabal, while Exodus uses it for the blow against Egypt and the blow withheld from the marked houses. One root holds both lethal impact and protection from impact, opening the verse’s striking verb into a wider pattern.
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