1 Samuel 14:46

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Then Saul went up from following the Philistines; and the Philistines went to their own place.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים

Pᵉlishtîy

H6430

“Philistines”

Noun, Gentilic, Masculine, Plural, Absolute

Appears 290× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Genesis 10:14

Full BDB Definition

Origin: patrial from H6429

TWOT: None

Philistine = "immigrants" - an inhabitant of Philistia; descendants of Mizraim who immigrated from Caphtor (Crete?) to the western seacoast of Canaan

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 →

7: words
6: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
4 nouns
1 preposition

Verb forms

וַיַּ֣עַל Qal · Sequential Imperfect
הָלְכ֥וּ Qal · Perfect

Repetition

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

פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים Philistine H6430 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 16 words from the Hebrew and 15 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.

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 14:46 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיַּ֣עַל שָׁא֔וּל מֵאַחֲרֵ֖י פְּלִשְׁתִּ֑ים וּפְלִשְׁתִּ֖ים הָלְכ֥וּ לִמְקוֹמָֽם

Then Saul went up from following the Philistines; and the Philistines went to their own place.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 1 Samuel 14:46 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ἀναβαίνω σαούλ ἀπό ὄπισθε ὁ ἀλλόφυλος καί ὁ ἀλλόφυλος ἀποἔρχομαι εἰς ὁ τόπος αὐτός

And Saul went up from following the Philistines; and the Philistines departed to their place.

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)

וּסְלֵיק שָׁאוּל מִבָּתַר פְּלִשְׁתָּאֵי וּפְלִשְׁתָּאֵי אֲזָלוּ לְאַתְרֵיהוֹן:

(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 14:46 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 14:46 Then Saul went up from following the Philistines: and the Philistines went to their own place.

Ver. 46. Then Saul went up.] Seeing that God was displeased, and the people discontented, and the time now past.

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.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(46) Then Saul went up from following the Philistines.—Saul recognised now that the fault which caused the oracle of the Urim and Thummim to keep silence was his, and not Jonathan’s. He seems quietly to have acquiesced with Ahijah’s evident reluctance to countenance a public pursuit; he drew off his forces then from the direction of the enemy, and went up, no doubt, to Gibeah; but the power of the Philistines for the time seems to have been utterly broken, and they retreated to their own districts along the sea coasts.

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

John Gill's Exposition

Then Saul went up from following the Philistines,.... Returned home to his own city, finding that he could get no answer from the Lord, whether he should pursue further or not, and losing the time and opportunity of doing it, by examining into the affair of his son, and casting lots to find it out:

and the Philistines went to their own place; their country and cities, such of them as remained, who were not cut off by their own and the sword of the Israelites. Josephus (n) says, Saul killed about 60,000 of them. It seems to be the will of God that they should not now be utterly destroyed, that they might be a rod of correction in his hand, to chastise the people of Israel hereafter.

(n) Antiqu. l. 6. c. 6. sect. 5.

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

Saul went up from following the Philistines; partly because he was discouraged by God’s refusing to answer him; and partly because his delays had given them occasion to secure themselves.

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

The Pulpit Commentary

Saul went up, etc. Thus, as the final result of his self-will, Saul had to discontinue his pursuit of the Philistines, and their power, though weakened by the overthrow, remained unbroken.

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 Samuel, in the Historical, opens this verse with 7 words (6 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Pᵉlishtîy (“Philistine”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “Philistine” (Pᵉlishtîy) contribute to the verse as a whole?
What does the repetition of “Philistine” (2× 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?
«וַיַּ֣עַל» is a Qal Sequential Imperfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

These translations choose different wording for 3 words in this verse.
“Philistine” occurs 2× in this single verse.
6 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 7 words in this verse.