What Does 1 Samuel 2:31 Mean in the King James?
Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father’s house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house.
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 arm of the house is cut away, and its elders disappear: the verse binds a household’s power and continuity in one severing.
THE MEANING
You see a house stripped of the arm that carries its power, with no elder left within it. The loss reaches beyond one person’s strength: the house’s capacity and its continuity are cut together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that a house can lose its strength and keep its future untouched: the severing of its arm is followed by the disappearance of its elders.
THE ROOT
זְרוֹעַ
zeroaʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow or scatter seed.
The word for arm is linked to the root of sowing and seed. The verse places the father’s house’s arm beside the loss of its elders, making severed capacity and interrupted continuity resonate together.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: To sow or plant seed.
זָרַע
Sowing is an act of outward extension; its shared root gives the cut arm’s loss of reach an added resonance.
zeraʿ: Seed or offspring.
זֶרַע
The seed word connects the root to what a house extends into the future, echoing the verse’s image of its elders disappearing.
THE PATTERN
The arm pictures power reaching into action: when it is strong, it can act; when it is broken, its reach is lost.
Thou hast a mighty arm: strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand.Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it, to make it strong to hold the sword.He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.THE THREAD
Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it, to make it strong to hold the sword.The same Hebrew word for arm appears here as in 1 Samuel, where the arm of a house is cut off. Ezekiel makes the image bodily: the broken arm cannot hold a sword, while Samuel’s verse shows the loss reaching into the household’s continuity.
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