Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
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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.
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.
Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
Am I lacking ravers, that you have brought this to rave near me? Should this enter into my house?”
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.
Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
Am I in need of madmen, that you have brought this man to rave in my presence? Must this man come into my house?”
Am I in need of madmen, that you have brought this man to rave in my presence? Must this man come into my house?”
Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
Do I lack madmen, that ye have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
Do I lack mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
Haue I neede of mad men, that ye haue brought this fellowe to play the mad man in my presence? shall he come into mine house?
Have we need of madmen, that you have brought in this fellow, to play the madman in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
A lack of madmen `have' I, that ye have brought in this one to act as a madman by me! doth this one come in unto my house?'
Am I lacking madmen, that you have brought in this one to act as a madman before me? Does this one come into my house?”
Do I lack madmen, so that you have brought this fellow to behave like one in my presence? Will this fellow really come into my house?”
Am I lacking ravers, that you have brought this to rave near me? Should this enter into my house?”
have I lack of madmen, that ye have brought this one to rave in my presence? shall this [man] come into my house?
Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? Should this fellow come into my house?”
Have I need of mad-men, that ye have brought this man to play the mad-man in my presence? shall this man come into my house?
Is it because I need more mad people that you've brought this man to go crazy right in front of me? Do you think I'm going to let him come into my house?”
Are there not enough unbalanced men about me, that you have let this person come and do such tricks before me? is such a man to come into my house?
(21-16) Do I lack madmen, that ye have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?'
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 מְשֻׁגָּעִים֙ to be mad H7696 — appearing just 7 times in the whole Hebrew Bible.
First appearance in Scripture
This word makes its first canonical appearance in the Hebrew Bible here:
Shared distinctive vocabulary
מְשֻׁגָּעִים֙ to be mad H7696 occurs in 6 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 24 words from the Hebrew and 25 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 17 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.
חֲסַ֤ר מְשֻׁגָּעִים֙ אָ֔נִי כִּי הֲבֵאתֶ֣ם אֶת זֶ֔ה לְהִשְׁתַּגֵּ֖עַ עָלָ֑י הֲזֶ֖ה יָב֥וֹא אֶל בֵּיתִֽי
Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to play the madman in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?
World English Bible · Public Domain
καί εἶπον αγχους πρός ὁ παῖς αὐτός ἰδού ὁράω ἀνήρ ἐπίληπτος ἵνα τίς εἰςἄγω αὐτός πρός ἐγώ
Am I in lack of madmen, that you⌃ have brought him in to me to play the madman? He shall not come into the house.
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.
וַאֲמַר אָכִישׁ לְעַבְדוֹהִי הָא כַד חֲזֵיתוּן דִגְבַר שָׁטֵי הוּא לְמָא אַיְתֵיתוּן יָתֵיהּ לְוָתִי:
(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 13 words (10 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is shâgaʻ (“to be mad”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on 1 Samuel 21:15 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
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.
Geneva Bible (1599)
Geneva Bible translators
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.
Adam Clarke's Commentary
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword 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.
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).
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.
John Wesley's Explanatory Notes
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.