What Does 1 Samuel 4:15 Mean?
Now Eli was ninety and eight years old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see.
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 Eli was ninety and eight years old; and his eyes were dim, that he could not see.THE KEY
The verse sets Eli (עֵלִי, ʿĒlî, “my God”) beside eyes described with qum (קום, qûm, “stand or rise”): sight is pictured as standing still.
THE MEANING
A body can reach a real limit: the eyes no longer carry sight, and a person cannot see. The verse names that loss plainly, leaving it present and unsoftened.
THE ROOT
קָמָה
qāmâ
GROWS FROM
קום
qûm
To stand or rise.
The form translated “dim” comes from qum, whose basic image is standing or rising; here it can suggest eyes set in place. The next words keep the loss concrete: Eli cannot see.
ALSO GROWS
qām: stood, arose
קָם
This is the root’s basic action; it lets “dim” carry the added image of eyes that have become fixed.
heqim: raised, established
הֵקִים
This causative form makes something stand, showing how the same root extends from rising to being set in place.
maqom: place, standing place
מָקוֹם
This noun from the same root names a place where one stands, echoing the image of sight that has become still.
לִרְאוֹת
lirʾot
GROWS FROM
ראה
raʾah
To see, look, or behold.
“see” in this verse is lirʾot. This root names both the act of seeing and what comes into view. In this verse, the inability is direct: the visible world no longer reaches Eli through his eyes.
ALSO GROWS
roʾeh: seer, one who sees
רֹאֶה
The same root names the person who sees, linking sight to the one who receives what is visible.
marʾeh: appearance, vision
מַרְאֶה
What appears shares the root with seeing; when Eli cannot see, that connection between the seer and what appears is broken.
THE PATTERN
Sight can fail in the body or be closed to what is in front of it; scripture distinguishes seeing from merely having eyes.
And it came to pass at that time, when Eli lay down in his place, and his eyes began to dim, so that he could not see.For the heart of this people has grown thick, and their ears are heavy of hearing, and they have closed their eyes; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and put it together with their heart, and turn around, and I should heal them.And Jesus said, For judgment I have come into this world, that those who do not see might see, and that those who see might become blind.THE THREAD
And it came to pass at that time, when Eli lay down in his place, and his eyes began to dim, so that he could not see.Both verses say Eli could not see, using the same Hebrew root ראה (raʾah, “see”). The earlier wording says his eyes begin to fail; here the phrase returns as a settled condition.
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