What Does 1 Samuel 17:7 Mean in the King James?
And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam; and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron: and one bearing a shield went before him.
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 giant’s menace is not one body but a fighting apparatus: a beam-like spear, measured iron, and another person carrying his shield.
THE MEANING
A threat that fills your vision arrives with more than one body: its weapon has weight, and someone else carries its defense. The verse makes the supports of that force visible. What confronts you has people and objects upholding it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that an overwhelming force is self-sufficient. Here its strength visibly depends on a carrier and a shield as well as the armed man.
THE ROOT
נֹשֵׂא
nōśēʾ
GROWS FROM
נשׂא
n-ś-ʾ
To lift, carry, or bear; in some uses, to take away.
The shield does not carry itself: the verse gives its bearing to another person. The same root names both the act of carrying and a burden, making the carrier part of the giant’s visible force.
ALSO GROWS
maśśāʾ: A load or burden.
מַשָּׂא
This noun comes from the same root: the bearer and what is borne belong to one word-family.
nāśîʾ: A prince or leader, traditionally understood as one lifted up.
נָשִׂיא
The same lifting image can name a person raised into prominence, linking the one who bears with the one held up before others.
THE PATTERN
What appears to belong to one figure is often carried, held, or sustained by others.
But Moses’ hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.And as they led him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus.Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.THE THREAD
Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.The shield-bearer is described with נֹשֵׂא (nōśēʾ), from נשׂא (n-ś-ʾ), “to bear”; Isaiah uses that same root in “he hath borne.” Here the bearer carries a weapon’s defense; there, he bears griefs, revealing how much the identity of the carrier changes what is being carried.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us