What Does 1 Samuel 3:18 Mean?
And Samuel set before him every word, and hid nothing from him. And he said, It is the LORD. Let him do what is good in his eyes.
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 Samuel told him every whit, and hid nothing from him. And he said, It is the LORD: let him do what seemeth him good.THE KEY
Samuel will not let the LORD’s hard word disappear from view: the Hebrew root behind “hid” also carries the sense of vanishing.
THE MEANING
The full message reaches you without being trimmed, and the LORD’s action is named directly. The announced judgment remains severe; the response leaves its outcome under what is good in the LORD’s eyes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie undone is that a hard word becomes more loving when part of it is concealed.
THE ROOT
כִחֵד
kiḥēd
GROWS FROM
כחד
To hide or conceal; in the Niphal, to be hidden or disappear.
English “hid” sounds like simple withholding, but כחד also names disappearing or being cut off. Samuel does not let the judgment disappear through silence; the full word remains before Eli.
ALSO GROWS
nikḥad: Be hidden; disappear or be cut off.
נִכְחַד
Psalm 69:5 uses this form for sins that are not hidden from God; here the active form tells how Samuel conceals nothing from Eli.
hikḥid: Cause to disappear; destroy or cut off.
הִכְחִיד
This causative branch shows how something can be made to vanish; Samuel does not make the warning vanish.
הַדְּבָרִים
haddevarim
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; as a noun, a word, matter, or thing.
“every word” in this verse is haddevarim. The phrase translated “every whit” is literally “all the words,” from a noun that can also mean a matter or thing. The disclosure carries the whole matter, rather than a trimmed report.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: A word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
Samuel tells every davar; the word can name both what is spoken and the matter being disclosed.
dibbēr: Speak or declare.
דִּבֵּר
The same root’s verb is speech, binding the act of speaking to the matter the words make known.
THE PATTERN
A painful truth can be named plainly, with its outcome left in the LORD’s hands.
And he said, Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I will turn back there. The LORD gave, and the LORD took; blessed be the name of the LORD.Then Moses said to Aaron, This is what the LORD spoke, saying, In those who draw near to me, I will be set apart, and before the face of all the people I will be given weight. And Aaron kept still.And when he would not be moved, we fell silent, saying, Let the will of the Lord come to be.THE THREAD
O God, you perceive my folly, and my debts are not hidden from you.Psalm 69:5 uses the same root כחד in the form translated “are not hid”: what cannot be hidden from God. In Samuel, the active form names the refusal to conceal the LORD’s message from Eli, linking spoken truth with what remains known to God.
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