1 Kings 13:10

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

So he went another way, and didn't return by the way that he came to Bethel.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Download a study sheet

One document with this verse’s original text, its word-by-word gloss line, the meaning frame, cross-references with their text, attributed commentary, and full source and license credits — printable, and it pastes into notes with its structure intact.

This verse Autodidact and up

Study sheet (.html) Plain text (.txt)

A passage Seminary Student

Up to 50 verses in one chapter. A passage sheet keeps up to 6 commentary sources and 12 cross-references per verse, in the order this page ranks them, and says so on the sheet whenever that leaves anything out. Ask for a single verse and you get the Autodidact verse sheet above.

Everything on this page stays free to read, with no account — the sheet is a download of what is already on screen, not access to it.

Want to remove ads? Support Godless Engineer

Word by word

More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →

Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →

בֵּֽית

Bêyth-ʼÊl

H1008

“Bethel”

Noun, Proper

Appears 144× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 12:8

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H1004 and H410

TWOT: 241a

Bethel = "house of God" - ancient place and seat of worship in Ephraim on border of Benjamin, identified with Luz (former name) - a place in south country of Judah, not far from Beersheba and Ziklag

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

12: words
9: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Grammatical profile

3 verbs
4 nouns
1 adjective
2 prepositions
2 particles

Verb forms

וַיֵּ֖לֶךְ Qal · Sequential Imperfect
שָׁ֣ב Qal · Perfect
בָּ֥א Qal · Perfect

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

בְּדֶ֣רֶךְ way H1870 ×2
בֵּֽית Bethel H1008 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 16 words from the Hebrew and 18 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 12 Hebrew tokens and 17 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew 1 Kings 13:10 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיֵּ֖לֶךְ בְּדֶ֣רֶךְ אַחֵ֑ר וְלֹֽא שָׁ֣ב בַּדֶּ֔רֶךְ אֲשֶׁ֛ר בָּ֥א בָ֖הּ אֶל בֵּֽית אֵֽל

So he went another way, and didn't return by the way that he came to Bethel.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 1 Kings 13:10 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ἀποἔρχομαι ἐν ὁδός ἄλλος καί οὐ ἀναστρέφω ἐν ὁ ὁδός ὅς ἔρχομαι ἐν αὐτός εἰς βαιθηλ

So he departed by another way, and returned not by the way by which he came to Baethel.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וַאֲזַל בְּאוֹרְחָא אוֹחֲרֵי וְלָא תָב בְּאוֹרְחָא דַאֲתָא בָהּ לְבֵית אֵל:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on 1 Kings 13:10 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

1Ki 13:10 So he went another way, and returned not by the way that he came to Bethel.

Ver. 10. So he went another way.] This was well done, though afterwards he failed and flinched; as did likewise Gropperus; who first refused a cardinal’s hat, and yet afterwards was a turncoat. So did Speiserus at Augsburg, in Germany, A.D. 1523, and Brissomettus at Meldas, in France, about the same time. Non praestitit constantiam, et ab incepto destitit, saith mine author, he stuck not to his principles. {a}

{a} Scultet., Annal.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

So he went another way, and returned not by the way that he came to Bethel. Neither ate nor drank with the king, though that is not expressed; nor did he go back the same way he came; but in each particular observed the divine command, and was obedient to it.

So he went another way, and returned not by the way that he came to Bethel. Neither ate nor drank with the king, though that is not expressed; nor did he go back the same way he came; but in each particular observed the divine command, and was obedient to it.

1 Kings 13:11

kg1 13:11

kg1 13:11

kg1 13:11Now there dwelt an old prophet in Bethel,.... The Targum is, a false prophet, so Josephus (b); it is hard to say what he was, a good man or a bad man; if a good man, he was guilty of many things which are not in his favour, as dwelling in such an idolatrous place suffering his sons to attend idolatrous worship, and telling the man of God a premeditated lie; and yet there are several things which seem contrary to his being a bad man, and of an ill character, since he is called an old prophet, did not attend idolatrous worship, showed great respect to the man of God, had the word of God sent unto him concerning him, believed that what he had prophesied should come to pass, buried the man of God in his own grave, and desired his sons to bury him with him. In some copies his name is said to be Micah, as Kimchi observes, and other Jewish writers (c) say the same; though some take him to be Amaziah the priest of Bethel, and others Gersom the son of Moses (d), but without any foundation; though he now dwelt at Bethel, he was originally of Samaria, Kg2 23:18,

and his sons came and told him all the works that the man of God had done that day in Bethel; that the altar was rent, and the ashes poured out, as he had said, and that Jeroboam's hand withered, and was restored upon his prayer to God:

the words which he had spoken unto the king; that one should be born of the family of David, Josiah by name, that should offer the idolatrous priests, and burn the bones of men upon that altar, and that that should be rent, and its ashes poured forth, which was done:

them they told also their father; gave him a particular account of his actions and words.

(b) Antiqu. l. 8. c. 9. sect. 1. (c) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 104. 1. (d) Shalshalet Hakabala, ut supra. (fol. 11. 1.) Shirhalbirim Rabba, fol. 10. 2.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Bethel, which was defiled, 1 Kings xxi. 5. God would thus caution us to keep at the greatest distance (Tirinus) possible from evil company, (Haydock) and from whatever may lead to sin. (Menochius) --- Besides the literal sense, Sanchez believes that the prophet was thus admonished to comply exactly with his injunctions, and to leave nothing unfinished; as God says, by the way that he came, he shall return, (Isaias xxxvii. 34.) to denote that Sennacherib’s attempts should be frustrated. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

The Pulpit Commentary

So he went another way, and returned not by the way that he came to Bethel.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

1 Kings, in the Historical, opens this verse with 12 words (9 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Bêyth-ʼÊl (“Bethel”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

How does “Bethel” (Bêyth-ʼÊl) shape what this verse is saying?
“way” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
The verb «וַיֵּ֖לֶךְ» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and John Gill's Exposition read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 12 Hebrew ↔ 17 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 10 words in this verse.
“way” occurs 2× in this single verse.
9 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 12 words in this verse.