Then the king answered, Give her the living child, and in no way kill it: she is the mother of it.
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The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
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Then the king answered, Give her the living child, and in no way kill it: she is the mother of it.
Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
And the king answered and said, “Give the living child to her, and killing, you shall not kill him. She is his mother.”
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
Then the king answered, Give her the living child, and in no way kill it: she is the mother of it.
Then the king gave his ruling: “Give the living baby to the first woman. By no means should you kill him; she is his mother.”
Then the king gave his ruling: “Give the living baby to the first woman. By no means should you kill him; she is his mother.”
Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.
Then the King answered, and sayde, Giue her the liuing childe, and slay him not: this is his mother.
The king answered, and said: Give the living child to this woman, and let it not be killed, for she is the mother thereof.
And the king answereth and saith, `Give ye to her the living child, and put it not at all to death; she `is' its mother.'
And the king answers and says, “Give the living child to her [who wants him], and do not put him to death at all; she [is] his mother.”
Then the king answered and said, “Give the first woman the living child, and by no means kill him. She is his mother.”
And the king answered and said, “Give the living child to her, and killing, you shall not kill him. She is his mother.”
And the king answered and said, Give this one the living child, and in no wise put it to death: she is its mother.
Then the king answered, “Give the first woman the living child, and definitely do not kill him. She is his mother.”
Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother of it.
The king gave his verdict. “Give the child that's alive to the first woman,” he ordered. “On no account kill him, for she is his real mother.”
Then the king made answer and said, Give her the child, and do not put it to death; she is the mother of it.
Then the king answered and said: 'Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it: she is the mother thereof.'
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
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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 →
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 21 words from the Hebrew and 27 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 13 Hebrew tokens and 23 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.
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.
וַיַּ֨עַן הַמֶּ֜לֶךְ וַיֹּ֗אמֶר תְּנוּ לָהּ֙ אֶת הַיָּל֣וּד הַחַ֔י וְהָמֵ֖ת לֹ֣א תְמִיתֻ֑הוּ הִ֖יא אִמּֽוֹ
Then the king answered, Give her the living child, and in no way kill it: she is the mother of it.
World English Bible · Public Domain
καί ἀποκρίνω ὁ βασιλεύς καί εἶπον δίδωμι ὁ παιδίον ὁ εἶπον δίδωμι αὐτός αὐτός καί θάνατος μή θανατόω αὐτός αὐτός ὁ μήτηρ αὐτός
Then the king answered and said, Give the child to her that said, 'Give it to her, and by no means kill it:' she is its mother.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
On this verse, The Pulpit Commentary discusses the Septuagint’s reading. Read the note in Commentary ↓
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 →
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.
וַאֲתֵיב מַלְכָּא וַאֲמַר הָבוּ לָהּ יַת רַבְיָא חַיָא וּמִקְטַל לָא תִקְטְלוּנֵיהּ הִיא אִמֵיהּ:
(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.
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 13 words (11 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʼêm (“mother”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on 1 Kings 3:27 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
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.
Joseph Benson's Commentary
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill's Exposition
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
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
The Pulpit Commentary
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Wesley's Explanatory Notes
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Keil & Delitzsch
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch
Keil & Delitzsch — Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament (1861–1891) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API. (Old Testament only.)
Rashi
Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)
Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.