The three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
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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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The three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
And the three eldest sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
And the oldest three of the sons of Jesse went, they went after Saul to the battle. And the names of the three of his sons who went into the battle Eliab, the firstborn, and his second, Abinadab, and the third, Shammah.
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.
The three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
The three older sons of Jesse had followed Saul into battle: The firstborn was Eliab, the second was Abinadab, and the third was Shammah.
The three older sons of Jesse had followed Saul into battle: The firstborn was Eliab, the second was Abinadab, and the third was Shammah.
And the three eldest sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
And the three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the first-born, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
And the three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
And the three eldest sonnes of Ishai went and followed Saul to the battel: and the names of his three sonnes that went to battell, were Eliab the Eldest, and the next Abinadab, and the thirde Shammah.
And his three eldest sons followed Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons that went to the battle, were Eliab the firstborn, and the second Abinadab, and the third Samma.
and the three eldest sons of Jesse go, they have gone after Saul to battle; and the name of his three sons who have gone into battle `are' Eliab the first-born, and his second Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
and the three eldest sons of Jesse go, they have gone after Saul to battle; and the name of his three sons who have gone into battle [are] Eliab the firstborn, and his second Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
The three oldest sons of Jesse had followed Saul to the battle. The names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, second to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
And the oldest three of the sons of Jesse went, they went after Saul to the battle. And the names of the three of his sons who went into the battle Eliab, the firstborn, and his second, Abinadab, and the third, Shammah.
And the three eldest of the sons of Jesse had gone and followed Saul to the battle; and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and the second to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
The three oldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle; and the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
And the three eldest sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the first-born, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
Jesse's three oldest sons had joined Saul's army. These were Eliab (the firstborn), Abinadab (second), and Shammah (third).
And the three oldest sons of Jesse had gone with Saul to the fight: the names of the three who went to the fight were Eliab, the oldest, and Abinadab the second, and Shammah the third.
And the three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle; and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the first-born, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
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 →
Notable vocabulary
The rarest word here is שַׁמָּֽה Shammah H8048 — appearing just 7 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
Shared distinctive vocabulary
שַׁמָּֽה Shammah H8048 occurs in 7 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Repetition
Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 38 words from the Hebrew and 38 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the same length.
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 21 Hebrew tokens and 27 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.
Topical passages linked to 1 Samuel 17:13 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
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.
וַיֵּ֨לְכ֜וּ שְׁלֹ֤שֶׁת בְּנֵֽי יִשַׁי֙ הַגְּדֹלִ֔ים הָלְכ֥וּ אַחֲרֵי שָׁא֖וּל לַמִּלְחָמָ֑ה וְשֵׁ֣ם שְׁלֹ֣שֶׁת בָּנָ֗יו אֲשֶׁ֤ר הָלְכוּ֙ בַּמִּלְחָמָ֔ה אֱלִיאָ֣ב הַבְּכ֗וֹר וּמִשְׁנֵ֨הוּ֙ אֲבִ֣ינָדָ֔ב וְהַשְּׁלִשִׁ֖י שַׁמָּֽה
The three eldest sons of Jesse had gone after Saul to the battle: and the names of his three sons who went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
World English Bible · Public Domain
καί εἶπον σαούλ πρός δαυίδ οὐ μή δύναμαι πορεύομαι πρός ὁ ἀλλόφυλος ὁ πολεμέω μετά αὐτός ὅτι παιδάριον εἰμί σύ καί αὐτός ἀνήρ πολεμιστής ἐκ νεότης αὐτός
And the three elder sons of Jessae went and followed Saul to the war, and the names of his sons that went to the war were, Eliab his first-born, and his second Aminadab, and his third son Samma.
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 →
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.
וַאֲזַלוּ תְּלָתָא בְּנֵי יִשַׁי רַבְרְבַיָא אֲזָלוּ בָּתַר שָׁאוּל לִקְרָבָא וְשׁוּם תְּלָתָא בְנוֹהִי דַאֲזָלוּ לִקְרָבָא אֱלִיאָב בּוּכְרָא וְתִנְיָנֵיהּ אֲבִינָדָב וּתְלִיתָאָה שַׁמָה:
(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 Samuel, in the Historical, opens this verse with 21 words (17 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is Shammâh (“Shammah”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on 1 Samuel 17:13 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.
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.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary
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).