What Does 1 Samuel 8:21 Mean?
And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and spoke them in the ears of the LORD.
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 heard all the words of the people, and he rehearsed them in the ears of the LORD.THE KEY
The words Samuel hears do not stop with him; he speaks them into the hearing of the LORD.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a chain of hearing: the people speak, Samuel hears, and then their words are voiced before the LORD. Your words are not reduced to noise; they can be received, repeated, and held in God’s hearing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your words vanish when the person beside you cannot answer them: Samuel carries the people’s speech into the LORD’s hearing.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁמַע
vayishma
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen, heed.
“heard” in this verse is vayishma. The root can hold hearing as attentive reception, not merely sound reaching an ear. Here Samuel hears all the people’s words, and that reception becomes the first movement in carrying them before the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
This branch makes visible the possibility within hearing: what is received can call forth a response.
shemuah: Report, tidings; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
Words that are heard can become a report carried onward, as the people’s words are carried here.
וַיְדַבְּרֵם
vayedabberem
GROWS FROM
דבר
Speak, declare.
The Hebrew verb says Samuel spoke the people’s words in the LORD’s ears. The same root gives davar, meaning word or matter, so their concerns remain concrete matters as they are voiced before God.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word, matter.
דָּבָר
The people’s words are also their matters: what Samuel carries before the LORD is the substance of what they have said.
dibbur: Speech, utterance.
דִּבּוּר
This branch keeps the action audible: Samuel gives the people’s words voice before the LORD.
THE PATTERN
Human words raised in distress enter God’s hearing, where they are received as matters that call for response.
And God heard and responded to their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.In my narrow place I call out to the LORD, and I cry out to my God. From his temple he hears and answers my voice, and my cry comes into his ears.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
And God heard and responded to their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.Exodus uses the same root, שמע, for God’s hearing that 1 Samuel uses for Samuel’s hearing of the people. There, hearing is joined to remembering the covenant: the groaning is received and held before God.
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