What Does 2 Samuel 15:16 Mean in the King James?
And the king went forth, and all his household after him. And the king left ten women, which were concubines, to keep the 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 king’s flight leaves ten women guarding the house he has abandoned.
THE MEANING
The king leaves, and ten women remain responsible for guarding his house. They are named both by their subordinate place in his household and by the work entrusted to them. The sentence records their duty without recording any protection for them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that assigning a duty means those carrying it are protected dissolves here: the king gives the women a task while leaving them behind.
THE ROOT
לִשְׁמֹר
lishmor
GROWS FROM
שׁמר
To guard, watch over, or keep.
“keep” in this verse is lishmor. English can make this sound like ordinary housework, but שׁמר is the root of guarding and keeping watch. The women are assigned to watch over the king’s house as he leaves them behind, holding their duty and his abandonment together.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: Keeper or watchman.
שֹׁמֵר
This is the same root’s word for someone who guards; it appears in 1 Samuel 17:20 for the keeper David leaves with his sheep.
mishmeret: Charge, watch, or guard duty.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch names an entrusted watch, showing that the women’s work is a duty of keeping the house while its king is gone.
THE PATTERN
A departure becomes abandonment when the person left with the duty to guard receives no protection in return.
And David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him; and he came to the trench, as the host was going forth to the fight, and shouted for the battle.But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.THE THREAD
And David rose up early in the morning, and left the sheep with a keeper, and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him; and he came to the trench, as the host was going forth to the fight, and shouted for the battle.The Hebrew calls David’s shepherd-keeper a שֹׁמֵר (shomer), from the same root as the women’s charge “to keep” the house here. David leaves the sheep with an explicit keeper; in this verse, the women themselves are left to keep the king’s house.
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