What Does 2 Samuel 11:13 Mean?
And when David had called him, he ate and drank before the face of the king, and he made him drunk. And at evening he went out to lie down on his bed with the servants of his lord, but did not go down to his house.
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 when David had called him, he did eat and drink before him; and he made him drunk: and at even he went out to lie on his bed with the servants of his lord, but went not down to his house.THE KEY
David turns hospitality into leverage, making Uriah drunk in an attempt to bend a loyalty that still holds.
THE MEANING
The table is a tactic: David feeds Uriah and makes him drunk, hoping to draw him into going home. Uriah still sleeps among his lord’s servants and does not go home, so David’s pressure fails to produce the choice he seeks. The verse places calculated control beside a loyalty that remains intact.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that an offered meal is always an act of care: here, food and drink serve David’s attempt to control Uriah’s choice.
THE ROOT
וַיַּשְׁכְּרֵהוּ
wayyashkirehu
GROWS FROM
שכר
sh-k-r
To become drunk; in a causative form, to make someone drunk.
“made him drunk” in this verse is wayyashkirehu. The Hebrew verb makes David the agent of Uriah’s intoxication: he does not merely watch Uriah drink; he makes the drunkenness happen. The same root connects the action of making someone drunk with words for intoxicating drink and a drunken person, tracing the movement from drink to impaired state.
ALSO GROWS
shekar: Intoxicating drink.
שֵׁכָר
This branch names the drink associated with intoxication, linking the substance to the state David deliberately brings about.
shikkor: Drunk or intoxicated person.
שִׁכּוֹר
This branch names the resulting condition, completing the root’s movement from causing intoxication to being intoxicated.
THE PATTERN
Intoxication can remove restraint and expose a person to consequences or to another person’s designs.
And he drank of the wine, and was drunk, and he was uncovered in the midst of his tent.Woe to the one who gives his neighbor drink, mixing in your heat and making him drunk also, so that you may look upon their nakedness!And do not become drunk with wine, in which is excess, but be filled with the breath.THE THREAD
And he drank of the wine, and was drunk, and he was uncovered in the midst of his tent.The same Hebrew root שכר (sh-k-r, to become drunk or make drunk) appears in both descriptions of intoxication. Genesis shows drunkenness followed by exposure; 2 Samuel shows it deliberately produced as a tactic, linking the root to vulnerability without making the two scenes identical.
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