What Does 2 Samuel 14:3 Mean?
Go in to the king, and speak to him according to these words. So Joab set the words in her mouth.
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 come to the king, and speak on this manner unto him. So Joab put the words in her mouth.THE KEY
The command to speak and the words Joab places in her mouth share one Hebrew root: the verse shows a voice being authored before it is voiced.
THE MEANING
A voice can carry words shaped and placed there by someone else; speaking in the first person does not prove first-person authorship. The words pass through the speaker’s mouth while serving another person’s design.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the assumption that words spoken in someone’s own voice must originate with them.
THE ROOT
דִּבַּרְתְּ
dibbart
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; word or matter.
The same root gives the verse both the act of speaking and the words themselves, binding the voiced act to its content. Joab’s words become the very speech she is told to deliver.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word, matter, affair, or thing.
דָּבָר
The word can name both what is said and the matter being conveyed.
dibber: To speak or declare.
דִּבֵּר
This is the speaking verb in the instruction to her, from the same root as the words Joab places in her mouth.
וַיָּשֶׂם
wayyāśem
GROWS FROM
שים
To put, set, or place.
“set” in this verse is wayyāśem. The verse describes speech as something deliberately placed in a mouth. The image makes the words’ source part of what the sentence reveals.
ALSO GROWS
lasim: To put, set, or place.
לָשִׂים
The verb’s basic sense makes the mouth the location where the words are set.
sam: He placed or set.
שָׂם
This form shares the root of Joab’s action: he positions the words there before she speaks.
THE PATTERN
Speech can be placed in a mouth before it is spoken, making the source of a voice part of its meaning.
And you will speak to him, and set the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and I will instruct you both in what you will do.Then the LORD stretched out his hand and touched my mouth. And the LORD said to me, Look, I have set my words in your mouth.For the Set-Apart Breath will teach you in that very hour what you must say.THE THREAD
And you will speak to him, and set the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and I will instruct you both in what you will do.This verse reuses the same Hebrew roots for speaking (דבר, d-b-r) and placing (שים, s-y-m), with words set in another person’s mouth. That shared wording makes the source of the speech central to how the current verse reads.
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