The Fallible · Synthetic · Study Bible
Saul’s Victories
1 Samuel 14:47–52 — Saul’s Victories. Each verse below carries the full apparatus: the Berean Standard Bible, the vocalized original (tap any word), and a parsed breakdown of every term transcribed from the interlinear. Synthesized commentary, canonical threads, and the reading of Christ gather at the end, over the whole unit.
47After Saul had assumed the kingship over Israel, he fought against all his enemies on every side—the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the kings of Zobah, and the Philistines. Wherever he turned, he routed them.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
wə·šā·’ūl lā·ḵaḏ ham·mə·lū·ḵāh ‘al- yiś·rā·’êl way·yil·lā·ḥem bə·ḵāl ’ō·yə·ḇāw sā·ḇîḇ bə·mō·w·’āḇ ū·ḇiḇ·nê- ‘am·mō·wn ū·ḇe·’ĕ·ḏō·wm ū·ḇə·mal·ḵê ṣō·w·ḇāh ū·ḇap·pə·liš·tîm ū·ḇə·ḵōl ’ă·šer- yip̄·neh yar·šî·a‘
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Saul had-seized the-kingship over Israel, and-he-fought against-all his-enemies round-about: against-Moab, and-against-the-sons-of-Ammon, and-against-Edom, and-against-the-kings-of-Zobah, and-against-the-Philistines; and-in-all-that he-turned-to, he-condemned.
Where the English smooths the original
He did not invade them, as may be gathered from the next verse, but repelled them, and kept them within their own limits.Benson's restraint is worth weighing against Pulpit's "vast empire" language: the Hebrew Niphal of לחם supports Benson's reading of engagement rather than conquest.
The word means literally “to condemn,” and so (if the reading is correct) “to conquer,” the war being regarded as a suit against the enemies of God, in which defeat was tantamount to a verdict of condemnation.
This is the rendering which Luther has very aptly given to ירשׁיא; for הרשׁיע signifies to declare wrong, hence to condemn, more especially as applied to judges: here it denotes sentence or condemnation by deeds. Saul chastised these nations for their attacks upon Israel.
But it is not the purpose of Holy, Scripture to give us the history of all Saul s valiant exploits, but only of his moral probation and failure.The comma after "Holy" is in the printed text; we quote it as it stands rather than silently mend it.
48He fought valiantly and defeated the Amalekites, delivering Israel from the hands of its plunderers.
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Hebrew — tap a word ↓
way·ya·‘aś ḥa·yil way·yaḵ ’eṯ- ‘ă·mā·lêq way·yaṣ·ṣêl ’eṯ- yiś·rā·’êl mî·yaḏ šō·sê·hū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-he-made might, and-he-struck Amalek, and-he-snatched Israel from-the-hand of-him-who-plundered-it.
Where the English smooths the original
This signal triumph over the Philistines was followed, not only by their expulsion from the land of Israel, but by successful incursions against various hostile neighbors, whom he harassed though he did not subdue them.
a people that Israel, by the law of God, were bound to destroy, and blot out their name
As the Lord had commanded, De 25:17.The Geneva marginal letter (t) is dropped; the gloss itself is quoted whole, and its cross-reference to Deuteronomy 25:17 is the reason ch. 15 will be a trial and not merely a campaign.
does not merely signify he proved himself brave, or he formed an army, but denotes the development and unfolding of power in various respects.
49Now the sons of Saul were Jonathan, Ishvi, and Malchishua. His two daughters were named Merab (his firstborn) and Michal (his younger daughter).
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
bə·nê šā·’ūl way·yih·yū yō·w·nā·ṯān wə·yiš·wî ū·mal·kî- šū·a‘ wə·šêm šə·tê ḇə·nō·ṯāw šêm mê·raḇ hab·bə·ḵî·rāh wə·šêm mî·ḵal haq·qə·ṭan·nāh
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-the-sons of-Saul were: Jonathan, and-Ishvi, and-Malchi-shua; and-the-name of-his-two daughters: the-name of-the-firstborn Merab, and-the-name of-the-younger Michal.
Where the English smooths the original
But the one here called Ishui, is elsewhere (marginal references) called Abi-nadab; and a fourth son, Esh-baal or Ish-bosheth, is here omitted.
Ishbosheth, Saul’s other son, is here omitted, because he intended to mention only those of his sons who went with him into the battles here mentioned, and who were afterwards slain with him.Poole states as the historian's intention what is, strictly, an inference from the Gilboa list; Cambridge and K&D leave the omission unexplained.
Either Ishui was a second name, or it is a corruption of the Heb. word for “and the second.”
probably owing to their connection with the history of David ( 1Samuel 18:17-21 ), the elder of them having been promised to him in marriage, and the younger being actually wedded to him.
50His wife’s name was Ahinoam daughter of Ahimaaz. The name of the commander of his army was Abner, the son of Saul’s uncle Ner.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šā·’ūl ’ê·šeṯ wə·šêm ’ă·ḥî·nō·‘am baṯ- ’ă·ḥî·mā·‘aṣ wə·šêm śar- ṣə·ḇā·’ōw ’ă·ḇî·nêr ben- šā·’ūl dō·wḏ nêr
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-the-name of-the-wife of-Saul: Ahinoam, daughter-of-Ahimaaz. And-the-name of-the-commander of-his-host: Abiner, son-of-Ner, uncle-of-Saul.
Where the English smooths the original
It has been surmised that she was of the family of Eli, the high priest, owing to the Ah (brother) entering into her name and that of her father, AhimaazA surmise, and Ellicott labels it one; Pulpit expressly declines to draw the conclusion.
might refer either to Abner or to Ner, but it is almost certain that it must refer to the latter, so that Saul and Abner were first cousins.
for Kish the father of Saul, and Ner, were brothers, as Josephus (p) says, and as appears from the next verse
whose name is here given in its strictly proper form, Abiner , was Saul's first cousin, both Kish and Ner being sons of Abiel
51Saul’s father Kish and Abner’s father Ner were sons of Abiel.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
šā·’ūl ’ă·ḇî- wə·qîš ’aḇ·nêr ’ă·ḇî- wə·nêr ben- ’ă·ḇî·’êl
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-Kish father-of-Saul, and-Ner father-of-Abner — son-of Abiel.
Where the English smooths the original
the commentators mostly agree we must read sons. Kish and Ner, we know, were both sons of Abiel.
It has been conjectured that Abiel is the same as Jehiel “the father” or founder of Gibeon, 1 Chronicles 9:35 , and that Gibeon is identical with Gibeah ; but this is doubtful.Cambridge's own "but this is doubtful" is the model for how we tier the genealogical threads below.
this Abiel was the father both of Kish and Ner, and the grandfather of Saul, see 1 Samuel 9:1
52And the war with the Philistines was fierce for all the days of Saul. So whenever he noticed any strong or brave man, Saul would enlist him.
Berean Standard Bible · CC0
Hebrew — tap a word ↓
ham·mil·ḥā·māh ‘al- pə·liš·tîm wat·tə·hî ḥă·zā·qāh kōl yə·mê šā·’ūl šā·’ūl wə·rā·’āh kāl- ’îš gib·bō·wr wə·ḵāl ḥa·yil ’ê·lāw ben- way·ya·’as·p̄ê·hū
Literal — word-for-word from the original
And-the-war was hard against-the-Philistines all the-days of-Saul; and-Saul saw any man mighty and-any son-of-force, and-he-gathered-him to-himself.
Where the English smooths the original
He had little reason to be proud of his royal dignity, nor had any of his neighbours cause to envy him, for he had but little enjoyment after he took the kingdom. And often men's earthly glory makes a blaze just before the dark night of disgrace and woe comes on them.
As Samuel had forewarned in 1Sa 8:11.Geneva's one-line gloss is the sharpest reading of v. 52 in the whole apparatus: the standing army is not incidental colour but the warning of 1 Samuel 8 coming true.
And as Saul had to carry on a severe war against the Philistines his whole life long, he drew to himself every powerful man and every brave man that he met with.
he raised the whole spirit of the people, and took an essential and necessary step for maintaining Israel's freedom.Pulpit's estimate runs directly against Geneva's; we print both rather than choose, because the Hebrew of v. 52 states a policy and withholds a verdict.
The verse-by-verse work is done. What follows gathers the whole unit. All three layers below are machine-generated (⚙). Weigh them; they have no authority.
AI synthesis — woven from the public-domain voices above and the original text; generated and fallible.
The unit opens with a verb of capture. לָכַ֥ד (lâkad, H3920) is the word for catching in a net, trap or pit, and it is the word the narrator chooses for how Saul came to hold הַמְּלוּכָ֖ה, the kingship. What that means is genuinely disputed among the sources. K&D holds that through the victory over the Philistines Saul "first acquired the kingship over Israel, i.e., first really secured the regal authority," and insists this does not contradict the lot at Mizpah or the confirmation at Gilgal. Barnes agrees that until now Saul "had been king in name only," reduced to six hundred half-armed men. Poole and Benson read the verb as recovery — he "resumed the administration of it, after he had in a manner lost it," Poole adding the sharp detail that he had lost it "partly by Samuel's sentence, 1 Samuel 13:14." Ellicott and Pulpit go a different way again: the verse is not a consequence of ch. 14 at all but a heading. Pulpit would translate, "When Saul had taken the kingdom over Israel, he fought." Barnes notes that some would move the whole paragraph back after ch. 11. ⚙ Our reading: the syntax favours Ellicott and Pulpit — a perfect verb fronted before a chain of consecutive imperfects is standard Hebrew for stepping back and summarising — and the mention of the Ammonite war, already told in ch. 11, is decisive, as Ellicott says. What the sources agree on, against every modern paraphrase, is that this sentence is a frame around a whole reign.
One adverb, סָבִ֣יב (çâbîyb, H5439, "round about"), draws a full compass, and Ellicott, Pulpit and Cambridge each walk it: Moab and Ammon east, Edom south, Zobah on the north-east between Damascus and the Euphrates, Philistia west along the sea. Cambridge observes that no separate account of the Moab, Edom and Zobah campaigns is given at all, "for the object of the book is not to give a complete history of Saul's reign, but to describe its salient features, and the sins which led to his rejection." Then comes the verse's hardest word. יַרְשִֽׁיעַ (yarshîaʻ, Hifil of râshaʻ, H7561) is not a military verb but a judicial one: to declare wrong, to condemn. Ellicott admits its exact sense "has puzzled all commentators" and that the LXX read a different word, translating "he was preserved"; Pulpit and Cambridge report the Syriac and Vulgate giving simply "he was victorious." Poole renders it "he condemned them," and Gill cites the Targum to the same effect. Cambridge supplies the rationale — "the war being regarded as a suit against the enemies of God, in which defeat was tantamount to a verdict of condemnation" — and K&D, following Luther, lands on "whithersoever he turned, he inflicted punishment," glossing it as "condemnation by deeds." ⚙ The narrator has given Israel's first king a judge's vocabulary. That is not a small thing in a book whose hinge is a king who mis-sentences Amalek and is himself sentenced.
The second verse of the summary contains the highest praise Saul receives in it, and a translation crux. וַיַּ֣עַשׂ חַ֔יִל is literally "and he made force." Ellicott and Pulpit both report that the AV's "he gathered an host" follows the Syriac and Vulgate, while the margin, "he wrought mightily," is "the more accurate" (Ellicott) and "probably the true meaning" (Pulpit). Cambridge prefers "did valiantly," citing Numbers 24:18. K&D goes furthest: the phrase "does not merely signify he proved himself brave, or he formed an army, but denotes the development and unfolding of power in various respects." Gill, alone, defends the older rendering with a historical argument — that Saul had disbanded his men and was down to six hundred, and now "gathered a numerous host." Then the praise: וַיַּצֵּ֥ל (nâtsal, H5337, Hifil) — he snatched Israel out of the hand of its plunderer. This is Exodus vocabulary. And it is spoken over the Amalekite campaign, which Geneva's marginal gloss ties back to the standing command of Deuteronomy 25:17 and which Gill describes as a people Israel "by the law of God, were bound to destroy, and blot out their name." Ellicott explains why this one war out of many is singled out: it was "especially prominent" in the new development of Hebrew power. JFB, more soberly, weighs the whole record: Saul harassed his neighbours "though he did not subdue them." ⚙ The reader who turns one page finds the same king before the same nation, and the deliverer becomes the condemned.
K&D notices the structural oddity first: notices of family "stand at the very beginning in the case of other kings" but come last here, because Saul had to fight for his throne before he could have a court. What follows is a register in which the gaps are as loud as the entries. Three sons are named — the three, as Ellicott, Pulpit and K&D all observe, who will die with their father on Gilboa. The middle name is a problem: וְיִשְׁוִ֖י occurs in only four verses in the canon and elsewhere always of a son of Asher. Benson, Poole, Gill, Ellicott and K&D identify him with the Abinadab of 1 Samuel 31:2; Cambridge allows instead that the word may be "a corruption of the Heb. word for 'and the second.'" A fourth son, Esh-baal or Ish-bosheth, is simply absent. Barnes records the omission; Poole and Benson explain it by the historian's plan to name only those who fell at Gilboa; Gill reports Abarbinel's alternative that he is omitted because he became a king; K&D, more honestly, says "the reason why he is not mentioned here it is impossible to determine," and floats a copying error. The daughters are named for the sake of a story not yet begun — Ellicott: "probably owing to their connection with the history of David." Then the household: a queen we know nothing of but her name (Ellicott), a general whose name is here given in its long, proper form Abiner (Pulpit), and a kinship term, דּ֥וֹד, that will not resolve. Cambridge sets out the grammar squarely — "Saul's uncle" could attach to Abner or to Ner — and argues from Abner's vigour seven years after Gilboa that Ner must be meant, so that Saul and Abner were first cousins, concluding that "there is probably some confusion of the names in Chronicles." Finally v. 51, where the Masoretic בֶּן־ is singular against two subjects; Ellicott, Barnes, Pulpit and K&D all read bᵉnê, "sons." ⚙ We print the emendation and the flag together. A register this domestic, this cluttered with variants, is not decoration: it is the narrator laying out every piece — Jonathan, Merab, Michal, Abner, the missing Ish-bosheth — that the next twenty chapters will move.
The summary closes with a sentence that is half fact and half omen. "And the war was חֲזָקָ֣ה (hard, severe) against the Philistines all the days of Saul." K&D shows how the two halves of the verse hold together: because the war was severe his whole life long, "he drew to himself every powerful man and every brave man that he met with." Ellicott spells out the consequence — a standing army, the thing that under David "became one of the great armed forces of the East" — and reminds the reader that Saul finally lost his life to this same enemy. Cambridge says the recruits served "in his permanent corps of picked soldiers." Gill, citing Josephus, notes the criterion: men who "exceeded others in comeliness of person, and in largeness and height." On the meaning of the policy the sources split, and the split is worth preserving. Pulpit is admiring: in forming a "school of heroes" Saul "raised the whole spirit of the people, and took an essential and necessary step for maintaining Israel's freedom." Geneva is one line and merciless: "As Samuel had forewarned in 1Sa 8:11." Henry, glancing over the whole paragraph, says Saul "had little reason to be proud of his royal dignity" and adds the sentence that hangs over the unit: "often men's earthly glory makes a blaze just before the dark night of disgrace and woe comes on them." ⚙ The verb of the last clause is ʼâsaph, to gather, with "to him" attached. Whatever else the policy was, it gathered Israel's strength to the king's person.
⚙ This is the tool's own fallible reading, offered to be tested by the text. Six verses of administrative prose contain no miracle, no prophet, no word of the LORD — and that absence is the point. Every other summary of a reign in Samuel-Kings is framed by a divine verdict; this one is framed by two verbs of acquisition. Saul seized the kingship (lâkad, the trapper's word) at the start and gathered men to himself (ʼâsaph, "to him") at the end, and between them he did the one genuinely godlike thing the paragraph records: he snatched Israel out of a plunderer's hand (nâtsal). The register of vv. 49-51 sits inside that frame like an inventory — sons, daughters, wife, general, grandfather — and the narrator has quietly placed in it every human instrument that will be used to take the kingdom back out of his hands: Jonathan, who will love David; Michal, who will save him; Merab, who will be promised to him; Abner, who will prop up a rival throne. The verb yarshîaʻ at v. 47 is a judge's word, and the tragedy of this book is that a king who spends his reign passing sentence on the nations cannot pass a right sentence on Amalek and cannot survive the sentence passed on himself. Geneva's one-line gloss on v. 52 is, we think, the true key: the standing army is not neutral administration but 1 Samuel 8:11 coming true, and a kingdom that must be held by gathering every strong man to the king's person is already a kingdom held the way the nations hold theirs. Pulpit's warmer reading — that Saul "admirably fulfilled the primary object for which he was chosen" — is not wrong about the facts; it is answering a different question. The facts here are good. What the passage withholds is the only thing that makes facts good in this book: a word from the LORD.
He seized a kingdom and gathered an army, and the only sentence he could not carry out was the one passed on himself. (⚙ synthesis, not a verse.)
AI-generated connections. Each carries a verification badge with a recorded basis; contested links are flagged.
The roster of v. 49 — Jonathan, Ishvi (Abinadab), Malchishua — recurs almost intact in the account of Saul's death and in the Chronicler's retelling. Ellicott, Pulpit and K&D all read v. 49 in the light of 1 Samuel 31:2 and treat the two lists as the same three men. The Verifier confirms the link lexically: the rare royal name מַלְכִּי־שׁ֑וּעַ (H4444 Malkîyshûwaʻ) occurs in only five verses in the whole canon, three of which are these. The genealogies in 1 Chronicles 8:33 and 9:39 add the fourth son, Esh-baal, whom our verse omits — which is precisely why K&D suspects a copying loss here rather than an authorial silence.
1 Samuel 31:2 · 1 Chronicles 10:2 · 1 Chronicles 8:33 · 1 Chronicles 9:39
basis: Verifier: shared H4444 Malkîyshûwaʻ (in 5 vv — rare) with 1 Samuel 31:2, 1 Chronicles 8:33 and 1 Chronicles 9:39, plus H7586 Shâʼûwl (335 vv) and H6430 Pᵉlishtîy (244 vv). The rare name carries the link. It is a repeated roster, not a citation of one text by another — 'verbal' here means shared wording, and we claim nothing about direction of dependence.
The daughters are named in v. 49 with no story attached. Ellicott says they appear "probably owing to their connection with the history of David," and K&D points forward "with special reference to the occurrence described in 1 Samuel 18:17," where Saul offers Merab to David as bait for Philistine hands and then gives her to Adriel instead (18:19) before Michal is married to him. The Verifier grounds the link in the rarest name in the unit: מֵרַ֔ב (H4764 Mêrâb) occurs in only three verses in the entire Hebrew Bible, two of them being 1 Samuel 18:17 and 18:19. Gill supplies the outcomes for both daughters from those chapters.
1 Samuel 18:17 · 1 Samuel 18:19 · 1 Samuel 18:27
basis: Verifier: shared H4764 Mêrâb (in 3 vv — rare) with 1 Samuel 18:19, plus H6430 Pᵉlishtîy, H3898 lâcham and H7586 Shâʼûwl with 18:17. Shared rare naming, not quotation; the interpretive claim that the register anticipates David is Ellicott's and K&D's, marked as theirs.
Verse 51 closes the household register by reaching back to אֲבִיאֵֽל (H22 ʼĂbîyʼêl), the name that opened Saul's story at 1 Samuel 9:1 — "a Benjamite, a mighty man of valour," where Kish's line is given and the word chayil already stands. Ellicott, Gill, Pulpit and K&D all cross-refer 14:51 to 9:1 to settle the ben / bᵉnê question. The Verifier confirms the lexical tie: Abiel appears in only three verses in the canon, and 9:1 shares with our verse both that name and H7027 Qîysh (17 vv). Cambridge notes that 1 Chronicles 9:35-36 gives the same ancestor as Jehiel and conjectures a link to the founder of Gibeon, "but this is doubtful" — his caution, and ours.
1 Samuel 9:1 · 1 Chronicles 9:36 · 1 Chronicles 11:32
basis: Verifier: shared H22 ʼĂbîyʼêl (in 3 vv — rare) with 1 Samuel 9:1 and 1 Chronicles 11:32; also H7027 Qîysh (17 vv) and H2428 chayil (228 vv) with 9:1, and H5369 Nêr (16 vv) with 1 Chronicles 9:36. A shared proper-name chain within one book, not a quotation.
Verse 50 records an office; 2 Samuel 2:8 records what the holder of it did with the house he served. "Abner the son of Ner, commander of Saul's army, took Ish-bosheth" — the very son omitted from the list in v. 49 — "and made him king." The Verifier ties our verse to 2 Samuel 2:8 and 2:12 through H5369 Nêr (16 vv) together with H7586 Shâʼûwl. Ellicott calls Abner "the mainstay of the house of the dead King Saul" and recalls David's lament over him; Geneva's terse gloss records the end: "Whom Joab, David's captain, slew 2sa 3:27." ⚙ We tier this structurally: the names are shared, but what binds the passages is a narrative arc, not a verbal formula.
2 Samuel 2:8 · 2 Samuel 2:12 · 2 Samuel 3:27
basis: Verifier: shared H5369 Nêr (in 16 vv) + H7586 Shâʼûwl (335 vv) with 2 Samuel 2:8 and 2:12. The shared lexemes are proper names only; the real link is the narrative role of the office named in 14:50, so we decline the 'verbal' tier.
וְיִשְׁוִ֖י (H3440) occurs in only four verses in the Hebrew Bible. Three of them — Genesis 46:17, Numbers 26:44, 1 Chronicles 7:30 — name a son of Asher, not of Saul, and Ellicott notes exactly this: the name "occurs nowhere else, save in two genealogies as that of a son of Asher." Every commentator in this brief who addresses the difficulty resolves it a different way: Benson, Poole, Gill, Ellicott and K&D identify Saul's Ishvi with the Abinadab of 1 Samuel 31:2; Cambridge offers instead that the word is "a corruption of the Heb. word for 'and the second.'" ⚙ The lexical link to the Asherite verses is real but almost certainly accidental homonymy, and the identification with Abinadab is conjecture, however widely held. We flag the whole knot rather than pretend to a resolution.
Genesis 46:17 · Numbers 26:44 · 1 Chronicles 7:30 · 1 Samuel 31:2
basis: Verifier: shared H3440 Yishvîy (in 4 vv — rare) with Genesis 46:17, Numbers 26:44 and 1 Chronicles 7:30. The lexeme is genuinely shared, but the three other occurrences belong to Asher's line; the traditional identification of this Ishvi with Abinadab (1 Samuel 31:2) rests on harmonisation, and Cambridge proposes textual corruption instead. Contested — verify before building on it.
Verse 52 states Saul's recruiting criterion with the verb וְרָאָ֨ה (râʼâh, H7200, "to see"): whenever Saul saw a man gibbôr or a son of chayil, he gathered him. Gill, from Josephus, says he chose men of unusual "comeliness of person, and in largeness and height" — that is, men resembling the king the people had chosen by sight. Two chapters later, at the anointing of David, the same verb governs the LORD's refusal of that criterion: man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart. ⚙ We do not claim a quotation; we claim a deliberate narrative rhyme within one book, the kind Cambridge says the author is writing toward — "the sins which led to his rejection."
1 Samuel 16:7 · 1 Samuel 9:2 · 1 Samuel 8:11
basis: Not in the Verifier candidate list; the basis is the shared root H7200 râʼâh as the governing verb of both scenes (a very common lexeme, 1,100+ verses, so frequency proves nothing) plus the explicit thematic tie Geneva draws from 14:52 to 1 Samuel 8:11. Claimed as pattern, not as verbal dependence.
The unit's last verb is וַיַּאַסְפֵ֖הוּ (ʼâsaph, H622, "to gather for any purpose") with "to him" attached: Saul gathers the strong to himself. ⚙ Set beside it the apostolic principle that God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong, and the Lord who says that whoever does not gather with him scatters, and who dies in order to gather into one the scattered children of God. The contrast is ours, not the commentators'. It cannot be tiered verbal: the link crosses from Hebrew to Greek, where no shared Strong's number is possible, and the Greek synagō stands in the Septuagint tradition for ʼâsaph only as a translation choice, not as a citation of this verse.
1 Corinthians 1:26-27 · Matthew 12:30 · John 11:52
basis: Cross-Testament (Greek↔Hebrew): shared Strong's numbers are impossible by definition, so no verbal tier is available. The recorded basis is a motif contrast — a king gathering the mighty to himself (H622 ʼâsaph + H1368 gibbôr + H2428 chayil in 14:52) against the New Testament's gathering of the weak. No quotation is claimed and no commentator in this brief draws the line.
AI-generated reading; weigh it against the text.
⚙ The strangest word in this unit is יַרְשִֽׁיעַ (râshaʻ, H7561, Hifil) at v. 47 — a courtroom verb in a war report. Cambridge explains the logic: the campaign is "regarded as a suit against the enemies of God, in which defeat was tantamount to a verdict of condemnation"; K&D, with Luther, renders it "he inflicted punishment . . . condemnation by deeds." So Israel's first king executes sentence on the nations round about. The book then turns that verb on him: in the next chapter he fails to execute the sentence standing against Amalek since Deuteronomy 25:17 (the very text Geneva cites at v. 48), and Samuel pronounces against him. ⚙ The line from here to the cross runs through that failure. Paul writes that what the law could not do, God did by sending his own Son, and condemned sin in the flesh — the same forensic act, executed at last and executed rightly, by a King who carries out the sentence by bearing it. The judicial reading of yarshîaʻ is sourced (Cambridge, Poole, Gill's Targum, K&D); the line drawn from it to Romans 8 is ⚙ ours, and we mark it as such.
Romans 8:3 · Romans 8:1 · 1 Samuel 15:26
The single highest thing said of Saul in this summary is that he וַיַּצֵּ֥ל — nâtsal, H5337, snatched away — Israel "from the hand of him who plundered it" (v. 48). The verb is the Exodus verb; the idiom "from the hand of" is the standard Hebrew figure for dominion. It is, for one clause, the office of Israel's king stated in its purest form, and the book of Judges had said the same of every deliverer God raised up. ⚙ The office outlives the man. The Christ is confessed as the one who delivers from the hand of all who hate us, who binds the strong man and plunders his goods, who rescues from the dominion of darkness. That the Davidic king is a type of the Deliverer is the ancient and widely held reading of the whole monarchy narrative; what belongs to us here is only the observation that this particular verb, in this particular verse, is the one thing the register can honestly say about Saul — and that a page later he will need deliverance himself.
Luke 1:71 · Mark 3:27 · Colossians 1:13
⚙ Verses 49-51 read like the strongest thing in the unit: sons, daughters, a queen, a general, a grandfather. Henry, surveying the same paragraph, says Saul "had little reason to be proud of his royal dignity," and that "often men's earthly glory makes a blaze just before the dark night of disgrace and woe comes on them." Within twenty chapters every name in the register is spent — three sons dead on Gilboa (the Verifier confirms the roster link to 1 Samuel 31:2), Merab given away, Michal childless, Abner murdered, the omitted fourth son enthroned and then killed. The dynastic principle itself fails here, and the narrative moves to a house whose throne is promised forever. ⚙ The New Testament's genealogies answer this register directly: another catalogue of names, also full of gaps and textual variants, ending not in Gilboa but in a Son whose kingdom is not seized (lâkad) but given, and who does not need to gather the mighty because he is himself the strength of his people. The typological contrast between the failed house of Saul and the everlasting house promised to David is the ancient reading; the specific framing against this register is ours.
2 Samuel 7:16 · Matthew 1:1 · Luke 1:32-33
The biblical text is the Berean Standard Bible (BSB), public domain (CC0). Hebrew/Greek text, transliteration, morphology and Strong’s are transcribed from the Berean interlinear (CC0) + Strong’s lexicons (PD); the literal renderings, divergence notes, word notes and all synthesis are this tool’s own work (⚙) — fallible; verify them.
Named voices, quoted verbatim from public-domain works:
Text. Three places in this unit are genuinely unsettled, and we have flagged rather than smoothed each. (1) יַרְשִֽׁיעַ in v. 47: Ellicott reports that the LXX "evidently read another word here," translating esōzeto, "he was preserved"; Pulpit notes the Syriac and Vulgate give "he was victorious"; Gesenius, Luther, Poole, Cambridge and K&D take the Masoretic consonants in their forensic sense. BSB's "he routed them" is an interpretation, not a translation. (2) וַיַּ֣עַשׂ חַ֔יִל in v. 48: the AV's "he gathered an host" follows the Syriac and Vulgate (Ellicott, Pulpit); the margin "he wrought mightily," Cambridge's "did valiantly" and K&D's "he acquired power" follow the Hebrew idiom. Gill alone defends the older rendering on historical grounds. (3) בֶּן־ in v. 51 is singular in the received text with two subjects before it; Ellicott, Barnes, Pulpit and K&D all emend to bᵉnê, "sons," which BSB prints without a note. We record the emendation as an emendation.
Word order. In the interlinear source, the word indices for vv. 49-52 follow the English rendering rather than the Hebrew sequence (so, for example, in v. 50 the gloss "His" precedes "wife's" and "name"). Our literal renderings restore the Hebrew order as the consonantal text has it; the note keys still refer to the source's indices.
Genealogy. The relation of Ner, Kish, Abner and Saul is reported differently by Samuel and by Chronicles. Cambridge sets out the case that Ner was Saul's uncle and Abner his first cousin, concluding "there is probably some confusion of the names in Chronicles"; Barnes and K&D agree on the conclusion. Cambridge's further conjecture identifying Abiel with Jehiel of Gibeon he himself calls doubtful, and we have carried that doubt through. The identification of Ishvi with Abinadab is near-universal among these commentators but remains conjecture, and Cambridge's alternative (textual corruption of "and the second") is not refuted; our thread on that name is tiered flagged — verify source for that reason.
Sources and silences. Henry, JFB and Barnes comment on this paragraph as a block rather than verse by verse, so a single excerpt from each may serve more than one verse's concerns. Poole has no entry at 14:50 or 14:51. Ellicott's remark at v. 52 comparing Saul to King Frederick William of Prussia is an 1878 aside we have not quoted; it reflects its century, not the text. Ellicott's conjecture that Ahinoam belonged to the house of Eli is labelled a surmise by Ellicott himself and expressly declined by Pulpit; Barnes builds a further inference on it (that Saul married only after his election), which we record here and do not use. No word of the LORD, no prophet and no divine verdict occurs anywhere in these six verses — our sola-reading makes that silence load-bearing, which is an interpretive risk we state openly rather than conceal.
✦ = human, public-domain source, quoted and named. ⚙ = machine synthesis, to be verified. Flagged cross-references are left visible on purpose — the verifier working in the open. “Search the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” (Acts 17:11)