What Does 2 Samuel 3:31 Mean in the King James?
And David said to Joab, and to all the people that were with him, Rend your clothes, and gird you with sackcloth, and mourn before Abner. And king David himself followed the bier.
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 does not merely command grief; he follows the bier himself, placing authority inside the mourning it names.
THE MEANING
Grief takes visible form in torn garments, sackcloth, and lament before the bier. The king’s own steps follow it, so rank does not place him outside the community’s loss. Mourning is both spoken and embodied.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The assumption that authority must stand above grief dissolves when the king follows the bier himself.
THE ROOT
סִפְדוּ
sifdu
GROWS FROM
ספד
To lament or mourn aloud.
“mourn” in this verse is sifdu. The root gives mourning a voiced, shared form, alongside the torn clothes and sackcloth. Its related words name both the act of lamenting and the lament itself, so grief is not only felt; it is made audible and witnessed.
ALSO GROWS
misped: Lamentation; public mourning.
מִסְפֵּד
This noun from the same root names the communal lament that the verse makes visible in the procession.
sofĕdîm: Those who mourn or lament.
סֹפְדִים
The root also names the people who voice the grief, echoing the shared mourning David commands and joins.
THE PATTERN
Mourning becomes shared through visible acts and voices that accompany the dead.
And they came to the threshingfloor of Atad, which is beyond Jordan, and there they mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days.Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.And devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him.THE THREAD
And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications: and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.The Hebrew uses the same ס-פ-ד (s-p-d; safad) root for “mourn” and “mourneth,” carrying the voiced lament in both verses. The image of people grieving the pierced one opens this verse’s procession further: mourning gives loss a shared voice.
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