1 Kings 2:21

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

She said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah your brother as wife.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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אֲבִישַׁ֣ג

ʼĂbîyshag

H49

“Abishag”

Noun, Proper

Appears 5× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at 1 Kings 1:3

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H1 and H7686

TWOT: None

Abishag = "my father is a wanderer" - David's beautiful young nurse

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 →

8: words
8: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Notable vocabulary

The rarest word here is אֲבִישַׁ֣ג Abishag H49 — appearing just 5 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.

Shared distinctive vocabulary

אֲבִישַׁ֣ג Abishag H49 occurs in 5 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
5 nouns
1 particle

Verb forms

וַתֹּ֕אמֶר Qal · Sequential Imperfect
יֻתַּ֖ן Qal Passive · Jussive

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 14 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 8 Hebrew tokens and 14 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.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to 1 Kings 2:21 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

2 Samuel 16:21–22 Ahithophel said to Absalom, Go in to your father's concubines, that he has left to keep the house; and all Israel will hear that you are abhorred of your father: then will the hands of all who are with you be strong.
1 Kings 1:3 So they sought for a beautiful young lady throughout all the borders of Israel, and found Abishag the Shunammite, and brought her to the king.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

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 2:21 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַתֹּ֕אמֶר יֻתַּ֖ן אֶת אֲבִישַׁ֣ג הַשֻּׁנַמִּ֑ית לַאֲדֹנִיָּ֥הוּ אָחִ֖יךָ לְאִשָּֽׁה

She said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah your brother as wife.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 1 Kings 2:21 Septuagint · lemma form

καί εἶπον δίδωμι δέ αβισακ ὁ σωμανῖτις ὁ αδωνίας ὁ ἀδελφός σύ εἰς γυνή

And she said, Let, I pray you, Abisag the Somanite be given to Adonias your brother to wife.

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)

וַאֲמַרַת תִּתְיְהַב יַת אֲבִישַׁג דְמִן שׁוּנֵם לַאֲדֹנִיָהוּ אֲחוּךְ לְאִתּוּ:

(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 2:21 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 2:21 And she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah thy brother to wife.

Ver. 21. Let Abishag … be given to Adonijah to wife.] Overcome by Adonijah’s fair words and her own melting thoughts of compassion towards him, Bathsheba, not considering the consequents, proposeth the suit, and presseth it by the relation that was betwixt Solomon and Adonijah his brother. But was not David Adonijah’s father also? and will none serve his turn but his father’s concubine was not this to attempt against natural honesty and common decency? What if Abishag were καλη και σοφη - as Aelian saith Aspasia Milesia, Cyrus’s concubine, was - both fair and discreet, which is a rare mixture, yet she was not so fit for Adonijah; but he had a further fetch in this incestuous desire of his.

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

And she said, let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah thy brother to wife. For so Adonijah was by his father's side; and Bathsheba makes use of the relation, the more to move upon him to grant the request.

And she said, let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah thy brother to wife. For so Adonijah was by his father's side; and Bathsheba makes use of the relation, the more to move upon him to grant the request.

1 Kings 2:22

kg1 2:22

kg1 2:22

kg1 2:22And King Solomon answered and said unto his mother,.... With as much gentleness and mildness as he could, but inwardly fired at her request, and amazed at it, and could not forbear using some degree of tartness and resentment:

and why dost thou ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? is this a small petition? is this a fit and lawful one?

ask for him the kingdom also; for this is what he means by it, that by marrying the king's widow he may step into the throne whenever any opportunity offers, as any uneasiness, or insurrection in the kingdom, or the death of Solomon; for none but a king, the Jews say (b), might marry a king's widow, not any private man; and therefore for Adonijah to ask this was interpreted affecting the kingdom, and aspiring to it, and taking his measures to obtain it; yea, it is said (c), that none but another king, the successor, might make use of his servants, handmaids, and ministers; and it is observed, that Abishag was free to Solomon, but not to Adonijah:

for he is mine elder brother; and has that to plead in his favour, and if he could obtain this, it would strengthen his title, or at least be a plausible pretence, which he might make use of, when opportunity served, to gain the people to his interest:

even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah; she might as well ask for them as for him; whose interest it was, and therefore desirous it might be that he should be king, that so the one might be continued in the office of high priest, and the other as general of the army; who, Solomon knew, bore him no good will, but were secretly his enemies; and he suspected that this was a scheme of theirs, and that it was by their advice Adonijah made this request; so the Targum,

"are not he, and Abiathar the priest, and Joab the son of Zeruiah, in the counsel?''

in this counsel; it is what they had consulted among themselves as a preparation to bring about a design they are contriving; probably Solomon had private notice that they were plotting against him, and this confirmed him in the truth of it; and therefore all of them were upon this punished with deprivation of office, or loss of life.

(b) Misn. Sanhedrin, c. 2. sect. 2. (c) Maimon. Hilchot Sanhedrin, c. 2. sect. 1.

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

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

Thy brother, by the father’s side, whom brotherly affection and relation obligeth thee to gratify, at least, in small things.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

And she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah thy brother to wife. For the construction (tae with a nominative, or, as some think, T"yu used impersonallyman gebe), cf. Gen_27:42; Exo_10:8; and especially Num_32:5; and see Gesen., Lex. s.v. tae, and Ewald, Syntax, 295 b.

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 8 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʼĂbîyshag (“Abishag”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “Abishag” (ʼĂbîyshag) contribute to the verse as a whole?
1 Kings 1:3 shares the word «Abishag» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
The verb «וַתֹּ֕אמֶר» 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 8 Hebrew ↔ 14 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 2 words in this verse.
8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 8 words in this verse.