What Does 1 Samuel 13:2 Mean in the King James?
Saul chose him three thousand men of Israel; whereof two thousand were with Saul in Michmash and in mount Beth-el, and a thousand were with Jonathan in Gibeah of Benjamin: and the rest of the people he sent every man to his tent.
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 verse’s force lies in its paired movements: Saul selects a few and releases the rest.
THE MEANING
A focused task gathers some people into assigned places while the rest return to their own tents. Those released are still named as part of the people; selection and belonging are not the same thing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being outside the selected group does not mean being cast out of the people; the verse still calls them “the rest of the people.”
THE ROOT
שִׁלַּח
shillaḥ
GROWS FROM
שלח
š-l-ḥ
To send forth, release, or let go.
The word translated “sent” also carries the sense of release: Saul does not merely move the people, he lets them go back to their own tents. The verse holds selection and release together as two parts of organizing the people.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: Sending away; dismissal.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch makes the people’s return to their tents visible as a sending away, not just an absence from the chosen group.
mishloach: Sending; dispatch.
מִשְׁלוֹחַ
The same root can name an act of dispatch, linking Saul’s release of the people with the deliberate sending of others to specific places.
THE PATTERN
Collective work takes shape when a smaller group is selected and placed for a focused task.
And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come.THE THREAD
But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so that he would not let the children of Israel go.The same root, שׁלח (shalach), appears in the phrase “let … go,” where it carries the sense of release. Here it makes Saul’s sending the people home more than a change of location: they are released to return to their tents.
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