What Does 2 Samuel 13:16 Mean?
And she said to him, Nay, for this evil in sending me away is greater than the other that you have done to me. But he would not hear and respond to her.
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 she said unto him, There is no cause: this evil in sending me away is greater than the other that thou didst unto me. But he would not hearken unto her.THE KEY
Tamar calls Amnon’s sending her away a worse evil than his assault, and he refuses to hear her.
THE MEANING
Tamar names two harms: the sexual assault and the expulsion that follows, which she calls worse. The verse exposes how violence continues through rejection and silencing, rather than ending with the first act. Her account remains true even when the person who harmed her refuses to hear it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that ending contact after sexual violence is neutral, or that the harm ends when the assault ends; Tamar names the expulsion as a greater evil.
THE ROOT
לְשַׁלְּחֵנִי
leshalleḥeni
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send, send forth, release; here, send away or expel.
“in sending me away” in this verse is leshalleḥeni. English can make “sending me away” sound like a mere change of place, but Tamar names this sending as a distinct and greater evil. Here release takes the form of expulsion after assault.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: Sending away, dismissal
שִׁלּוּחַ
This noun makes sending away a distinct act, matching Tamar’s distinction between the assault and the harm that follows.
shaluach: One sent, a messenger
שָׁלוּחַ
The same root can describe someone sent onward; here Tamar is sent out, and the direction gives the word its force of rejection.
לִשְׁמֹעַ לָהּ
lishmoa lah
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen, heed; in shema, hearing includes response.
“hear and respond” in this verse is lishmoa lah. The verse says Amnon is unwilling to hear her, making his refusal explicit. The root’s sense of hearing and responding reveals that this is a relational rejection, not a failure of Tamar to speak plainly.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear and respond
שְׁמַע
The same root opens the call “Hear, O Israel,” where hearing carries the sense of response.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings; something heard
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch names a message received by hearing, sharpening the refusal in this verse: Amnon will not receive Tamar’s words.
THE PATTERN
When the vulnerable are cast aside or unheard, their harm deepens, and scripture treats their cry as real and hearable.
And God heard the voice of the boy, and the messenger of God called to Hagar from the heavens and said to her, What is with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is.Whoever stops up his ear to the cry of the emptied one also cries out, and is not answered.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
When a man takes a wife and marries her, and if she finds no favor in his eyes, because he finds some nakedness in her, then he writes her a writ of cutting away, places it in her hand, and sends her out of his house.The same root, שָׁלַח (shalach, send away), appears in both verses. Tamar uses it for being expelled after assault; here it describes a wife being sent out of her husband’s house, showing how the word can carry the force of removal from a household.
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