What Does 1 Samuel 19:13 Mean in the King James?
And Michal took an image, and laid it in the bed, and put a pillow of goats’ hair for his bolster, and covered it with a cloth.
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
Michal makes an absence look like a body, and the covering becomes the distance between pursuit and escape.
THE MEANING
A threat can be met by shaping what is visible: an image occupies the bed, goats’ hair gives it the outline of a head, and a garment completes the appearance. The person being sought is elsewhere; the covering turns absence into apparent presence and opens a path to escape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that protection must confront danger in the open is undone here: a concealed substitute makes room for escape.
THE ROOT
וַתְּכַסֵּהוּ
vattekhassehu
GROWS FROM
כסה
to cover, conceal
The verb belongs to the root כסה, which carries both covering and concealment. The same root describes sin as covered in Psalm 32:1; here, covering a crafted likeness turns an empty bed into apparent presence.
ALSO GROWS
kissah: he covered
כִּסָּה
This verb form shares all three root consonants, כ־ס־ה, and makes the act of covering explicit.
mikhseh: covering
מִכְסֶה
This noun retains the same root consonants and names a cover itself, like the garment that finishes the appearance in this verse.
THE PATTERN
Under threat, concealment can interrupt pursuit long enough for a life to move beyond danger.
And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.And the woman took the two men, and hid them, and said thus, There came men unto me, but I wist not whence they were:Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David, Maschil. Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.The Hebrew word translated “covered” in Psalm 32:1 comes from the same root, כסה, as Michal’s covering in this verse. One covering conceals a likeness in a bed; the other describes sin as covered, letting the shared root show how the act of concealment holds its meaning across very different scenes.
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