What Does 1 Samuel 14:15 Mean in the King James?
And there was trembling in the host, in the field, and among all the people: the garrison, and the spoilers, they also trembled, and the earth quaked: so it was a very great trembling.
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 disturbance spreads from the soldiers’ bodies into the earth itself, as though fear has become something the whole scene can feel.
THE MEANING
Fear here is not kept inside one person: it spreads through a crowd and reaches the ground beneath it. The Hebrew moves from alarm in people to agitation in the earth, then returns to the language of trembling to name the whole scene as overwhelming. Inner response and outer upheaval occupy the same moment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that power can keep its fear contained within its own ranks is undone: here the trembling escapes the people and reaches the ground.
THE ROOT
חֲרָדָה
charadah
GROWS FROM
ח־ר־ד
To tremble or be alarmed.
The verb for the people’s trembling and the repeated noun share this same root: Hebrew keeps the act and the condition connected. The closing חֲרָדַת אֱלֹהִים (charadat elohim, a great trembling of God) intensifies that shared root into an overwhelming disturbance.
ALSO GROWS
charad: To tremble, be alarmed.
חָרַד
This verb describes the people’s response, keeping their trembling tied to the same root as the verse’s repeated noun.
chared: One who trembles; fearful.
חָרֵד
This form names a person by the trembling they experience, making fear an embodied state rather than an abstract idea.
רָגַז
ragaz
GROWS FROM
ר־ג־ז
To quake, shake, or become agitated.
“quaked” in this verse is ragaz. English makes the people’s trembling and the earth’s quake sound like the same action, but the verse uses two roots: one for alarm in people, another for agitation in the earth. It then returns to the first root in its closing phrase, folding the earth’s quake into the same overwhelming disturbance.
ALSO GROWS
ragaz: To tremble, quake, or become agitated.
רָגַז
This verb describes the earth’s movement, extending the disturbance from people to the ground.
rogez: Tumult, agitation, or trouble.
רֹגֶז
The noun carries the same root’s sense of upheaval, illuminating how the earth’s movement belongs to a wider disturbance.
THE PATTERN
When a force overwhelms a scene, its shaking reaches beyond people into the ground and the structures that hold them.
And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.The LORD reigneth; let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubims; let the earth be moved.And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken: and immediately all the doors were opened, and every one’s bands were loosed.THE THREAD
And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.Exodus uses חָרַד (charad, to tremble) for Sinai’s movement, the same root that names trembling here. In this verse the shaking runs through a camp and into the earth; there it reaches the mountain, making the landscape part of the response.
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