What Does 2 Samuel 1:4 Mean in the King James?
And David said unto him, How went the matter? I pray thee, tell me. And he answered, That the people are fled from the battle, and many of the people also are fallen and dead; and Saul and Jonathan his son are dead also.
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 Hebrew for “matter” also means “word,” so the catastrophe reaches David as a spoken report of what has happened.
THE MEANING
Loss can reach you one clause at a time: people flee from battle, many fall and die, and Saul and Jonathan are dead too. The sentence holds mass death and named death together, without letting one blur the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The death of a king and his heir is the whole tragedy. The sentence names the fallen people first, then says Saul and Jonathan are dead also, leaving the many in view.
THE ROOT
הַדָּבָר
ha-dābār
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
Speak; a word, matter, or thing.
David asks for “the matter” (דָּבָר, dābār), a noun that can also mean “word”; the answer is the spoken form in which the matter reaches him. This shared sense lets the question hold both event and report together.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke; said.
דִּבֵּר
The same root forms the act of speaking that carries a matter into the open; David asks for the matter and receives a spoken account.
devarim: Words, matters, things.
דְּבָרִים
The plural keeps speech and events close in one word family; Genesis 15:1 uses it for “these things” before using the same root for “the word of the LORD.”
THE PATTERN
Death is named plainly, while particular people remain visible within the scale of loss.
So Saul died, and his three sons, and his armourbearer, and all his men, that same day together.Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her.Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead.THE THREAD
After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.Genesis 15:1 repeats the Hebrew root דבר (d-b-r): “these things” is הַדְּבָרִים (ha-devarim), and “the word of the LORD” is דְּבַר־יְהוָה (devar-YHWH). The same root holds what has happened and what is spoken, echoing David’s question about the matter and the report that answers him.
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