What Does 1 Chronicles 10:5 Mean in the King James?
And when his armourbearer saw that Saul was dead, he fell likewise on the sword, and died.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew uses the same root for Saul being “dead” and the armor-bearer who “died,” binding the state he sees to the death that follows.
THE MEANING
Two deaths stand in immediate sequence: the armor-bearer sees Saul dead, falls on the sword, and dies too. The verse gives no motive for the armor-bearer; it leaves that silence intact.
THE ROOT
מֵת
mēt
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
to die; to be dead
“dead / died” in this verse is mēt. English gives one word for Saul’s state and another for the armor-bearer’s action, while Hebrew forms both from מות. The shared root places the death he sees and the death that follows within one verbal line.
ALSO GROWS
māvet: death
מָוֶת
The same root names death itself, linking the verse’s two personal deaths to the word for death as a condition.
môt: to die; dying
מוֹת
This form makes the root’s action visible and connects the armor-bearer’s “died” to the same seed as Saul’s “dead”.
THE PATTERN
These narratives place a person’s death immediately after he sees a decisive collapse.
And it came to pass, when Zimri saw that the city was taken, that he went into the palace of the king’s house, and burnt the king’s house over him with fire, and died,And when Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his ass, and arose, and gat him home to his house, to his city, and put his household in order, and hanged himself, and died, and was buried in the sepulchre of his father.THE THREAD
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.Genesis 2:17 repeats the root in מוֹת תָּמוּת (môt tamût, “you shall surely die”). Here the same root appears first as Saul’s state and then as the armor-bearer’s outcome, moving from death seen to death suffered.
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