וְהַנַּ֖עַר לֹֽא יָדַ֣ע מְא֑וּמָה אַ֤ךְ יְהֽוֹנָתָן֙ וְדָוִ֔ד יָדְע֖וּ אֶת הַדָּבָֽר
But the boy didn't know anything: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
World English Bible · Public Domain
1 Samuel 20:39
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) 1 Samuel 20:39 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
But the boy didn't know anything: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
Download a study sheet
One document with this verse’s original text, its word-by-word gloss line, the meaning frame, cross-references with their text, attributed commentary, and full source and license credits — printable, and it pastes into notes with its structure intact.
This verse Autodidact and up
A passage Seminary Student
Up to 50 verses in one chapter. A passage sheet keeps up to 6 commentary sources and 12 cross-references per verse, in the order this page ranks them, and says so on the sheet whenever that leaves anything out. Ask for a single verse and you get the Autodidact verse sheet above.
Everything on this page stays free to read, with no account — the sheet is a download of what is already on screen, not access to it.
Want to remove ads?
Support Godless Engineer
Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
-
World English Bible Public Domain
But the boy didn't know anything: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
King James Version Public Domain
But the lad knew not any thing: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Now the boy did not know anything. Only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
-
World English Bible Public Domain
But the boy didn't know anything: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
But the boy did not know anything; only Jonathan and David knew the arrangement.
-
Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
But the boy did not know anything; only Jonathan and David knew the arrangement.
-
King James Version Public Domain
But the lad knew not any thing: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
But the lad knew not anything: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
But the lad knew not any thing: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
But the boy knewe nothing: onely Ionathan and Dauid knew the matter.
-
Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
And he knew not at all what was doing: for only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
And the youth hath not known anything, only Jonathan and David knew the word.
-
Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
And the youth has not known anything, only Jonathan and David knew the word.
-
Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
But the young man did not know anything. Only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Now the boy did not know anything. Only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
Darby Bible Public Domain
And the lad knew nothing: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
World Messianic Bible Public Domain
But the boy didn’t know anything. Only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
Webster's Bible Public Domain
But the lad knew not any thing: only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
-
Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
The boy didn't suspect anything—only Jonathan and David knew what it meant.
-
Bible in Basic English Public Domain
But the boy had no idea what was going on; only Jonathan and David had knowledge of it.
-
JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
But the lad knew not any thing; only Jonathan and David knew the matter.
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).
Word by word
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
מְא֑וּמָה
mᵉʼûwmâh
H3972
“anything”
Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- Appears 32× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Genesis 22:12
- Part of Speech
- Noun
- Type
- Common
- Gender
- Feminine
- Number
- Singular
- State
- Absolute
Full BDB Definition
anything
- וְהַנַּ֖עַר naʻar H5288 “and · the · boy” Conjunction + Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- לֹֽא lôʼ H3808 “not” Particle, Negative
- יָדַ֣ע yâdaʻ H3045 “to know” Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- מְא֑וּמָה mᵉʼûwmâh H3972 “anything” Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- אַ֤ךְ ʼak H389 “surely” Particle, Accusative
- יְהֽוֹנָתָן֙ Yᵉhôwnâthân H3083 “Jonathan” Noun, Proper
- וְדָוִ֔ד Dâvid H1732 “and · David” Conjunction + Noun, Proper
- יָדְע֖וּ yâdaʻ H3045 “to know” Verb, Qal, Perfect, 3rd Person, Common, Plural
- אֶת ʼêth H853 “-” Particle, Direct Object
- הַדָּבָֽר dâbâr H1697 “the · word” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
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 →
- 10
- words
- 9
- distinct lemmas
- Historical
- section
Shared distinctive vocabulary
מְא֑וּמָה anything H3972 occurs in 32 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 2 verbs
- 5 nouns
- 3 particles
Verb forms
- יָדַ֣ע Qal · Perfect
- יָדְע֖וּ Qal · Perfect
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
- יָדַ֣ע to know H3045 ×2
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 13 words from the Hebrew and 10 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 10 Hebrew tokens and 12 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.
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.
καί ὁ παιδάριον οὐ γιγνώσκω οὐδείς ιωναθαν καί δαυίδ γιγνώσκω ὁ ῥῆμα
And the boy knew nothing, only Jonathan and David knew.
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)
וְעוּלֵימָא לָא יְדַע מִדַעַם בְּרַם יְהוֹנָתָן וְדָוִד יַדְעִין יַת פִתְגָמָא:
(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.
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 10 words (9 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is mᵉʼûwmâh (“anything”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- How does “anything” (mᵉʼûwmâh) shape what this verse is saying?
- Genesis 22:12 shares the word «anything» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
- “to know” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
- The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
- The verb «יָדַ֣ע» is Qal Perfect. 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 10 Hebrew ↔ 12 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 9 words in this verse.
- “to know” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 9 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 10 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on 1 Samuel 20:39 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.