1 Samuel 12:15

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

but if you will not listen to the voice of Yahweh, but rebel against the commandment of Yahweh, then will the hand of Yahweh be against you, as it was against your fathers.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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וּמְרִיתֶ֖ם

mârâh

H4784

“and · to rebel”

Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural

Appears 45× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Numbers 20:10

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 1242

to be contentious, be rebellious, be refractory, be disobedient towards, be rebellious against - (Qal) to be disobedient, be rebellious - towards father - towards God - (Hiphil) to show rebelliousness, show disobedience, disobey

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 →

14: words
11: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וּמְרִיתֶ֖ם to rebel H4784 occurs in 44 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

3 verbs
7 nouns
1 preposition
1 conjunction
2 particles

Verb forms

תִשְׁמְעוּ֙ Qal · Imperfect
וּמְרִיתֶ֖ם Qal · Sequential Perfect
וְהָיְתָ֧ה Qal · Sequential Perfect

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

יְהוָ֔ה LORD H3068 ×3

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 33 words from the Hebrew and 35 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 14 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.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to 1 Samuel 12:15 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Joshua 24:20 If you forsake Yahweh, and serve foreign gods, then he will turn and do you evil, and consume you, after that he has done you good.
Isaiah 1:20 But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword; For the mouth of Yahweh has spoken it."
Isaiah 3:11 Woe to the wicked! Disaster is upon them; For the deeds of his hands will be paid back to him.
Leviticus 26:14–30 "'But if you will not listen to me, and will not do all these commandments;
Deuteronomy 28:15–68 But it shall come to pass, if you will not listen to the voice of Yahweh your God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command you this day, that all these curses shall come on you, and overtake you.
1 Samuel 12:9 But they forgot Yahweh their God; and he sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the host of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, and into the hand of the king of Moab; and they fought against them.
Romans 2:8–9 but to those who are self-seeking, and don't obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, will be wrath and indignation,
1 Samuel 5:9 It was so, that after they had carried it about, the hand of Yahweh was against the city with a very great confusion: and he struck the men of the city, both small and great; and tumors broke out on them.

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 Samuel 12:15 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְאִם לֹ֤א תִשְׁמְעוּ֙ בְּק֣וֹל יְהוָ֔ה וּמְרִיתֶ֖ם אֶת פִּ֣י יְהוָ֑ה וְהָיְתָ֧ה יַד יְהוָ֛ה בָּכֶ֖ם וּבַאֲבֹתֵיכֶֽם

but if you will not listen to the voice of Yahweh, but rebel against the commandment of Yahweh, then will the hand of Yahweh be against you, as it was against your fathers.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 1 Samuel 12:15 Septuagint · lemma form

ἐάν δέ μή ἀκούω ὁ φωνή κύριος καί ἐρίζω ὁ στόμα κύριος καί εἰμί χείρ κύριος ἐπί σύ καί ἐπί ὁ βασιλεύς σύ

But if you⌃ should not listen to the voice of the Lord, and you⌃ should resist the mouth of the Lord, then shall the hand of the Lord be upon you and upon your king.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

On this verse, Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 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 →

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)

וְאִם לָא תְקַבְּלוּן לְמֵימְרָא דַייָ וּתְסָרְבוּן עַל מֵימְרָא דַייָ וּתְהֵי מְחָתָא דַייָ בְּכוֹן כְּמָא דַהֲוַת בַּאֲבָהַתְכוֹן:

(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 Samuel 12:15 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

1Sa 12:15 But if ye will not obey the voice of the LORD, but rebel against the commandment of the LORD, then shall the hand of the LORD be against you, as [it was] against your fathers.

Ver. 15. There shall the hand of the Lord be against you.] This is an excellent way of preaching, - to mingle promises and threatenings. Sour and sweet make the best sauce.

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

1Sa 12:15. As it was against your fathers — Who lived under the judges; and you shall have no advantage by the change of government, nor shall your kings be able to protect you against God’s displeasure. We mistake, if we think we can evade God’s justice by shaking off his dominion. If we will not let God rule us, yet he will judge us.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Geneva Bible (1599)

Geneva Bible translators

Meaning, the governors.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(15) But if ye will not obey.—The English translation here, with several of the versions, accurately and happily understands the Hebrew in the sense of “as:” “as it was against your fathers.” Rabbi D. Kimchi prefers to understand “fathers” as put for “kings”: “the hand of the Lord shall be against you and your kings.” The LXX. reads, “against you and your king.”

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

15. as it was against your fathers] As set forth in 1Sa_12:9. The Sept. however reads, “and against your king,” which offers a more complete parallel to 1Sa_12:14. Cp. 1Sa_12:25.

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

But if ye will not obey the voice of the Lord, but rebel against the commandment of the Lord,.... They and their king, by sinning, disregarding his precepts, both affirmative and negative:

then shall the hand of the Lord be against you; by sending some judgments upon them, as famine, sword, or pestilence, particularly captivity and subjection to their enemies:

as it was against your fathers; who had no king; and it is suggested that their case, who had one, would be no better than theirs; their king would not be able to save them from the hand of God: the words in the original are, "and against your fathers" (m); which is interpreted in the Talmud (n) of their fathers dead, and in their graves, and of their enemies digging them up, and taking them out in contempt; but much better, by Kimchi, of their kings, who are, or should be, fathers of their subjects, as Augustus Caesar was called the father of his; and so the Septuagint version renders it, "and upon their king"; signifying that both they and their king should feel the weight of the hand of the Lord, if they rebelled against him.

(m) "et contra patres vestros", Pagninus, Tigurine version. (n) T. Bab. Yebamot, fol. 63. 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

CHAPTER XII.

Fathers. Septuagint, "king," ver. 25. Superiors (Worthington) are often styled fathers. Syriac, &c., "as upon your fathers," (Calmet) which is adopted by the Protestants, "as it was against," &c. (Haydock)

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).

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

Who lived under the judges; and you shall have no advantage in that point by the change of government, nor shall your kings be able to protect you against God’s displeasure.

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

The Pulpit Commentary

Against you, as it was against your fathers. The Hebrew has "against you and your fathers," and so the Vulgate, for which the Septuagint reads, "against you and your king," as in ver. 25. The text is probably corrupt, and to make sense requires the insertion of some such words as those given in the A.V, with which the Syriac also agrees.

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

Your fathers - Who lived under the Judges; and you shall have no advantage by the change of government, nor shall your kings be able to protect you against God's displeasure. The mistake, if we think we can evade God's justice, by shaking off his dominion. If we will not let God rule us, yet he will judge us.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

Then Adonoy's hand will be against you and against your forefathers. Meaning it will be against you after it was against your fathers. Our Rabbis however said, "against you and against your fathers" refers to the digging up of the dead, which is a disgrace upon the dead.

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.

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 Samuel, in the Historical, opens this verse with 14 words (11 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mârâh (“to rebel”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word mârâh carries the sense “to rebel.” How does it shape the verse?
How does Numbers 20:10, which shares the word «to rebel», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “LORD” (3× in this one verse) do in this verse?
These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
«תִשְׁמְעוּ֙» is a Qal Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Joseph Benson's Commentary read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 14 Hebrew ↔ 23 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 8 words in this verse.
“LORD” occurs 3× in this single verse.
11 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 14 words in this verse.