What Does 1 Samuel 4:19 Mean in the King James?
And his daughter in law, Phinehas’ wife, was with child, near to be delivered: and when she heard the tidings that the ark of God was taken, and that her father in law and her husband were dead, she bowed herself and travailed; for her pains came upon her.
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
In Hebrew, the root for “to bear” also forms “child” and “generations”: a new descendant is being brought forth as the family’s old supports collapse.
THE MEANING
A moment of terrible news and a beginning occupy the same present: grief remains real as new life is being brought forth. The birth does not explain away the deaths, and the deaths do not erase the birth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that new life proves the grief is over dissolves here: both remain real at once.
THE ROOT
וַתֵּלֶד
vatteled
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
To bear or beget; to bring forth.
English presents “delivered” and “travailed” as different actions, while the Hebrew repeats this root from “to bear” to “she bore.” It also forms יֶלֶד (yeled, “child”) and תּוֹלְדוֹת (toledot, “generations”), so a new child and a continuing line are carried inside the repeated language of bringing forth, even as the household’s losses are named.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child
יֶלֶד
The child is already contained in the same root as the act of bearing.
toledot: Generations, descendants
תּוֹלְדוֹת
This branch links one birth to the generations that follow.
שְׁמוּעָה
shemuʿah
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
To hear, listen, or heed.
Tidings is a report from the root for hearing. The same root can carry hearing that answers, placing her reception of the news directly beside her body’s labor.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear and respond
שְׁמַע
This branch shows hearing as an arrival that can meet an immediate response.
hishmiaʿ: Make heard, announce
הִשְׁמִיעַ
The report reaches her as something spoken and heard, just before the verse turns to her labor.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names the anguish of labor while keeping what is being brought forth in view.
Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O LORD.A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.THE THREAD
And she named the child I-chabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken, and because of her father in law and her husband.The child is named Ichabod (אִי־כָבוֹד, ʾî-kāḇôḏ, “Where is the weight?”), and the next verse answers with כָּבוֹד (kavod, “weight”): it has departed from Israel. The birth becomes the point at which absence is named; it does not resolve the loss held in the previous verse.
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