What Does 2 Samuel 1:3 Mean in the King James?
And David said unto him, From whence comest thou? And he said unto him, Out of the camp of Israel am I escaped.
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 answer turns a question of place into a report of escape: the man says he has gotten out of Israel’s camp.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you at a threshold: you ask where someone comes from, and he names both the place he left and the way he left it. He is out of Israel’s camp, and he describes his departure as escape. His account is present, while its meaning remains unsettled here.
THE ROOT
נִמְלַטְתִּי
nimlaṭti
GROWS FROM
מלט
To slip free, escape, or deliver.
Here the speaker uses this root to describe himself as one who has slipped free. The same seed can form an urgent command to escape or describe someone delivering another from destruction, so “escaped” belongs to a wider family of getting out and being brought clear.
ALSO GROWS
himmālēṭ: Escape or get away.
הִמָּלֵט
In Genesis 19:17, the same root makes escape an urgent movement away from danger.
waymallēṭ: He delivered or brought someone out.
וַיְמַלֵּט
Psalm 107:20 uses the root for being delivered from destruction, showing that escape can describe both slipping free and being brought clear.
דָּוִד
Dāwîḏ
GROWS FROM
דוד
Beloved; close kin in related uses.
David’s name carries the same letters as the Hebrew word for “beloved.” The question about the man’s origin is therefore voiced by one whose name carries a note of relationship, though that does not settle whether the stranger’s claim is true.
ALSO GROWS
dōd: A beloved person or close male relative.
דּוֹד
This related word makes the beloved quality carried in David’s name visible.
dōdîm: Affection or expressions of love.
דּוֹדִים
The plural appears in the language of love in Song of Solomon 1:2, extending the name’s root into affection.
THE PATTERN
Escape names the moment a living being gets beyond a place or force that could hold it.
And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.And the rest, some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass, that they escaped all safe to land.THE THREAD
Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped.Both verses use forms of מלט (malat, “slip free; escape”). Psalm 124:7 shows the movement through a broken snare: the trap no longer holds the one who was caught. The shared root lets the man’s answer sound like more than a location report; it names how he got out.
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