What Does 1 Samuel 27:9 Mean?
And David struck the land, and did not keep man or woman alive, and took the sheep, the oxen, the donkeys, the camels, and the garments, and turned back and came to Achish.
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 David smote the land, and left neither man nor woman alive, and took away the sheep, and the oxen, and the asses, and the camels, and the apparel, and returned, and came to Achish.THE KEY
The verse places killing and taking in one continuous motion: no man or woman is left alive, while livestock and clothing are carried off.
THE MEANING
The verse holds human destruction beside material gain: David leaves no man or woman alive, yet takes the animals and clothing. His return to Achish completes the sequence without separating the slaughter from the seizure.
THE ROOT
הִכָּה
hikkah
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
to strike, smite, or inflict a blow
“struck” in this verse is hikkah. The Hebrew root speaks of striking, with the force of a blow made explicit in its related words. Here it names direct violence, not merely a change of control over the land.
ALSO GROWS
makkah: blow, stroke; also plague
מַכָּה
This noun keeps the physical force of the strike visible in the verse’s action.
mukkeh: struck, wounded
מֻכֶּה
This branch names the condition produced by the same striking the verse describes.
יְחַיֶּה
yechayyeh
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
to live, or to keep alive
“did not keep man or woman alive” in this verse is yechayyeh. The Hebrew verb means “let live” or “keep alive,” making the wording an active denial of life. Its root also names the living and life themselves, so the verse’s boundary is stark: no person is spared to live.
ALSO GROWS
chay: living, alive
חַי
This is the state the verse says no man or woman is allowed to retain.
chayyim: life
חַיִּים
The same root names life itself, sharpening what the verb denies here.
דָּוִד
Dawid
GROWS FROM
דּוֹד
d-w-d
beloved
“David” in this verse is Dawid. The name carries the sense of belovedness, yet the verse places it beside the killing of every man and woman and the taking of their goods. The name does not soften the act; it leaves the tension between belovedness and violence in view.
ALSO GROWS
dod: beloved; a beloved one
דּוֹד
This root sense is carried in David’s name as the verse names him acting violently.
dodim: loves, caresses
דֹּדִים
This related form carries the root’s language of belovedness, making the contrast with the verse’s violence more visible.
THE PATTERN
Violence can become a means of acquisition when people are harmed or destroyed and material gain is taken alongside it.
Now go and strike Amalek, and devote all that they have to destruction, and do not spare them; but put to death man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.Her princes within her are like wolves tearing the prey, to pour out blood, and to make living souls perish, to cut for gain.And Jesus took it up and said, A certain man was stepping down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among robbers, who stripped him of his clothing and laid blows on him, and went away, leaving him half dead.THE THREAD
Now go and strike Amalek, and devote all that they have to destruction, and do not spare them; but put to death man and woman, infant and nursing child, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.“Smote” here and “smite” there come from נכה (n-k-h), meaning “to strike”; English hides the shared root beneath different verb forms. The link places this killing beside a command that names people and animals within the same sweep of violence.
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