What Does 1 Samuel 28:22 Mean?
Now therefore, please, you also hear and respond to the voice of your handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before you. And eat, that you may have strength, when you go your way.
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, I pray thee, hearken thou also unto the voice of thine handmaid, and let me set a morsel of bread before thee; and eat, that thou mayest have strength, when thou goest on thy way.THE KEY
The next stretch of the way is met with a morsel placed within reach, and strength begins in receiving it.
THE MEANING
The verse places a worn person between a voice and a meal: help is immediate, tangible, and small enough to receive. The next way opens as strength returns through food taken into the body.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the next step depends on resolve alone: the body receives food before it can carry the journey.
THE ROOT
דֶּרֶךְ
derek
GROWS FROM
דרך
d-r-k
To tread or step along.
The word for a way is tied to the ground someone actually treads. Here, strength serves movement through a real path, and a meal helps make the next steps possible.
ALSO GROWS
darak: To tread, step, or march.
דָּרַךְ
This verb shares the root with “way,” joining the road to the act of moving along it.
midrakh: A place to set the foot; footing.
מִדְרָךְ
This branch brings the way down to the next place the body can stand or step.
שְׁמַע
shemaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear or listen, with hearing that can open into response.
“hear and respond” in this verse is shemaʿ. The request begins by asking Saul to hear the handmaid’s voice, and that voice immediately offers food. In the verse, listening leads toward a concrete response to the body’s need.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: To hear or listen.
שָׁמַע
This is the verb behind “hearken,” the act through which the offer first reaches him.
shemuʿah: A report or message heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This noun shows how the same root can carry what arrives through hearing, linking the voice in the verse to what it communicates.
THE PATTERN
Strength for the way ahead is restored through provision placed before the person who must continue.
And the messenger of the LORD turned back a second time, and touched him, and said, "Rise and eat, for the road is too great for you."And wine that gladdens the heart of a frail one, and oil to make his face shine, and bread that holds up the heart of a frail one.Then Jesus called his disciples to himself and said, My insides turn toward the crowd, for they have remained with me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I will not send them away unfed, lest they come unstrung on the road.THE THREAD
And the messenger of the LORD turned back a second time, and touched him, and said, "Rise and eat, for the road is too great for you."Both verses place food before the journey continues: here the meal gives strength for the way; there food answers a journey too great to carry unfed. Together they show sustenance as the body’s provision for movement.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us