What Does 2 Samuel 19:35 Mean?
I am eighty years old this day. Can I perceive between good and bad? Can your servant taste what I eat or what I drink? Can I still hear the voice of singing men and singing women? Why then should your servant still be a load upon my lord the king?
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
I am this day fourscore years old: and can I discern between good and evil? can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink? can I hear any more the voice of singing men and singing women? wherefore then should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord the king?THE KEY
Discernment, taste, and music belong to one embodied life: age changes how all three can be received.
THE MEANING
Age appears here through changing capacities: knowing, tasting, and hearing song. Dependence brings a sharper question, whether a person’s presence has become a burden to the one they serve. The verse lets that fear be heard without deciding it.
THE ROOT
יטעם
yiṭʿam
GROWS FROM
טעם
ṭaʿam
To taste, and by extension to perceive or discern.
The root can name both tasting and discernment, tying judgment to embodied perception. Barzillai’s inability to taste sits beside his question about whether he can discern.
ALSO GROWS
taʿam: Taste, flavor, reason, or discernment.
טַעַם
This branch shows that taste and judgment belong to the same word family.
liṭʿom: To taste or experience.
לִטְעֹם
The verb makes tasting a way of directly experiencing what is before a person.
למשא
lemassa
GROWS FROM
נשא
nāśāʾ
To lift, carry, or bear.
“load” in this verse is lemassa. The word for burden belongs to the carry-and-bear word family: a burden is what must be borne. Barzillai wonders whether his continued presence is something his king must bear.
ALSO GROWS
nāśāʾ: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This verb reveals the action contained in the idea of a burden.
maśśāʾ: A load, burden, or something carried.
מַשָּׂא
This noun names what the root’s carrying action takes up.
האדע
haʾedaʿ
GROWS FROM
ידע
yādaʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive.
“perceive” in this verse is haʾedaʿ. The verb belongs to the word family of knowing and recognition. The verse presents discernment as a lived capacity that age can make uncertain.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: To know or recognize.
יָדַע
This is the root verb behind the question about discerning good and evil.
maddāʿ: Knowledge or understanding.
מַדָּע
This noun extends the same root’s knowing into knowledge held or understood.
THE PATTERN
The senses are the body’s way of receiving and recognizing life.
And the doors are shut in the streets when the sound of the grinding is low, and he rises at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of song bow down;O taste and see that the LORD is good. Flourishing is the strong one who takes shelter in him.That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have perceived with our eyes, which we have gazed upon, and our hands have touched, concerning the word of life.THE THREAD
O taste and see that the LORD is good. Flourishing is the strong one who takes shelter in him.Barzillai’s “taste” refers to food and drink; the same Hebrew root appears in the invitation to taste and see the LORD’s goodness. The shared word links ordinary bodily experience with direct encounter.
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