What Does 2 Samuel 14:26 Mean?
And when he sheared his head, for at the end of every year he sheared it, because its weight bore down upon him, he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels by the king's stone.
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 he polled his head, (for it was at every year’s end that he polled it: because the hair was heavy on him, therefore he polled it:) he weighed the hair of his head at two hundred shekels after the king’s weight.THE KEY
The word “heavy” shares a root with כָּבוֹד (kavod, “weight/glory”), and the verse then makes that weight literal by measuring the hair.
THE MEANING
Absalom’s hair grows heavy enough to be cut at each year’s end, and the verse records its weight against the king’s standard. Growth becomes weight, and weight becomes a number.
THE ROOT
כָּבֵד
kāvēd
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to carry weight in honor or significance.
“weight bore down” in this verse is kāvēd. The hair is literally heavy, but the same root also supplies the language of weight, honor, and glory. Literal weight and weightiness remain part of one Hebrew word family, without requiring the verse to claim that the hair symbolizes glory.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight, honor, or glory.
כָּבוֹד
It carries physical weight into the language of honor and glory, showing how the root extends beyond mass.
kibbēd: To honor or treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
It pictures honor as giving someone weight, extending the same root from physical heaviness into human regard.
וַיִּשְׁקֹל
wayyišqol
GROWS FROM
שקל
sh-q-l
To weigh or assess by weight.
“weighed” in this verse is wayyišqol. The act of weighing and the named unit of measure grow from the same root. The detail records more than abundant hair: it gives its mass against a stated standard.
ALSO GROWS
sheqel: A unit of weight, later also a coin.
שֶׁקֶל
The hair’s amount is expressed in shekels, turning the act of weighing into a countable measure.
mišqāl: Weight or a measure of weight.
מִשְׁקָל
The king’s weight names the standard used for the measurement.
THE PATTERN
Scripture lets weight name physical mass, abundance, and burdens, keeping the tangible and figurative connected.
And Abram was very heavy with cattle, with silver, and with gold.But Moses' hands were heavy. And they took a stone and set it under him, and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on this side and the other on that side, and his hands were steady until the sun went down.For they tie up heavy loads, hard to lift, and lay them on the shoulders of people, but they themselves will not move them, even with one of their fingers.THE THREAD
And Abram was very heavy with cattle, with silver, and with gold.The phrase translated “very rich” uses כָּבֵד (kāvēd, “heavy”), the same root attached to Absalom’s hair. In Samuel that weight is counted in shekels; in Genesis the same root carries the sense of abundance.
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