What Does 2 Samuel 13:15 Mean?
Then Amnon hated her exceedingly, so that the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her. And Amnon said to her, Rise, go away.
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
Then Amnon hated her exceedingly; so that the hatred wherewith he hated her was greater than the love wherewith he had loved her. And Amnon said unto her, Arise, be gone.THE KEY
The Hebrew sets love and hatred in matching noun-and-verb pairs, and Tamar’s expulsion reveals which one governs.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks plainly: a claim of love can coexist with assault, but it cannot make assault loving. Amnon’s hatred becomes an order that Tamar leave after he has raped her; the violence continues as rejection. The verse keeps that contradiction visible instead of letting the word “love” cover what he does.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the lie that intense desire, or the word “love”, can turn coercion into love; Amnon’s treatment of Tamar exposes the name as false.
THE ROOT
הַשִּׂנְאָה
ha-sin’ah
GROWS FROM
שׂנא
s-n-ʾ
To hate or hold hostility toward someone.
The Hebrew repeats this root as both the noun “hatred” and the verb “he hated,” then mirrors that pattern with the word for love. The repetition makes hostility a governing force in the sentence, not a passing feeling.
ALSO GROWS
sone: One who hates; an enemy.
שׂוֹנֵא
This branch describes a person in the posture of hostility that the verse names and repeats.
senu’ah: A hated woman; one who is hated.
שְׂנוּאָה
This feminine form makes the target of the hostility explicit: Tamar is the one being cast into hatred.
אַהֲבָה
ahavah
GROWS FROM
אהב
ʾ-h-b
To love; to hold affection for someone.
The verse pairs ahavah, “love,” with אָהֵב (ahav), “he loved her,” matching the noun-and-verb structure of hatred. That parallel lets the verse examine the claim of love against the assault and rejection that define Amnon’s actions.
ALSO GROWS
ohev: One who loves; loving.
אֹהֵב
This verb form echoes the verse’s claim that Amnon had loved Tamar, placing that claim beside what he does to her.
ahuv: Beloved; one who is loved.
אָהוּב
This branch names a person as beloved, sharpening the gap between the language of love and Tamar’s treatment.
THE PATTERN
Love is revealed through its conduct toward another person; the label alone does not make the conduct loving.
He executes judgment for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him bread and a cloak.Love does not lose its shape, does not seek its own, is not sharpened, does not keep count of harm.Little children, let us not love in word, nor in the tongue, but in works and in truth.THE THREAD
But he would not hear and respond to her voice, and, gripping her harder than she, bent her low, and lay with her.The preceding verse says Amnon refuses Tamar’s voice, overpowers her, and rapes her. That makes the next verse’s contrast between “love” and hatred legible: the expulsion follows an act that has already erased Tamar’s will.
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