What Does 2 Samuel 14:27 Mean?
And three sons were born to Absalom, and one daughter, whose name was Tamar. She was a woman fair in shape and fair to see.
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 unto Absalom there were born three sons, and one daughter, whose name was Tamar: she was a woman of a fair countenance.THE KEY
Tamar means “date palm,” so the verse lets her name and beauty meet as one image of flourishing made visible.
THE MEANING
The verse sets Tamar’s name beside her appearance: her name is the palm, and her beauty comes into view. She is not left as an unnamed child in a count; she appears as a named person with a distinct visible presence.
THE ROOT
תָּמָר
tamar
GROWS FROM
תמר
t-m-r
Date palm; a related form describes a rising column or plume.
Tamar is the Hebrew word for a date palm, so her name carries the image of a living tree. A related form is used for rising columns of smoke, extending the image into something upright and emerging.
ALSO GROWS
tamar: Date palm.
תָּמָר
This is the word used as Tamar’s name, giving her name the nature of a tree.
timarot: Columns or plumes, as in pillars of smoke.
תִּימֲרוֹת
The related form carries the palm’s upright image into a rising form that comes into view.
מַרְאֶה
mar'eh
GROWS FROM
ראה
ra'ah
To see or look.
“fair to see” in this verse is mar'eh. The word translated “countenance” is mar’eh, appearance or what is seen, from the root meaning “to see.” The Hebrew keeps her beauty joined to the act of seeing: she is not only described as fair, but made visible to the reader.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ah: To see or look.
רָאָה
This is the verb at the root of the word for appearance.
ro'eh: One who sees; a seer.
רֹאֶה
The related form names the one who sees, keeping sight and appearance connected.
mar'eh: Appearance, sight, or vision.
מַרְאֶה
This is the word used for Tamar’s countenance, the visible form described in the verse.
THE PATTERN
The palm and its related column image turn upright growth into a visible sign of flourishing and emergence.
The aligned one blooms like the palm tree; he grows tall like the cedar in Lebanon.Who is this climbing up from the wilderness like pillars of smoke, burning with myrrh and frankincense, with all the dust of the peddler?After this I see, and look, a great crowd that no one can number, from every nation and tribe and people and tongue, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, wrapped in white robes, with palm branches in their hands.THE THREAD
The aligned one blooms like the palm tree; he grows tall like the cedar in Lebanon.Both verses carry the Hebrew word תָּמָר (tamar, date palm). Psalm makes flourishing explicit in the image held by Tamar’s name, while 2 Samuel gives that image a person and a face.
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