1 Samuel 22:13

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

Saul said to him, Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread, and a sword, and have inquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?

World English Bible · Public Domain

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לְאֹרֵ֖ב

ʼârab

H693

“to/for · lying in wait”

Preposition + Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute

Appears 41× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Deuteronomy 19:11

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 156

to lie in wait, ambush, lurk - (Qal) - to lie in wait - ambush (participle as subst) - (Piel) ambushers, liers-in-wait (plural participle) - (Hiphil) to lay an ambush

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 →

22: words
18: distinct lemmas
Historical: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

לְאֹרֵ֖ב to lie in wait H693 occurs in 39 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

6 verbs
7 nouns
2 pronouns
6 prepositions
1 particle

Verb forms

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר Qal · Sequential Imperfect
קְשַׁרְתֶּ֣ם Qal · Perfect
בְּתִתְּךָ֨ Qal · Infinitive Construct
וְשָׁא֥וֹל Qal · Infinitive Absolute
לָק֥וּם Qal · Infinitive Construct
לְאֹרֵ֖ב Qal · Participle Active

Repetition

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

אלו to H413 ×3

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 47 words from the Hebrew and 46 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 22 Hebrew tokens and 36 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 22:13 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

1 Samuel 22:8 that all of you have conspired against me, and there is none who discloses to me when my son makes a league with the son of Jesse, and there is none of you who is sorry for me, or discloses to me that my son has stirred up my servant against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?
Psalms 119:69 The proud have smeared a lie upon me. With my whole heart, I will keep your precepts.
Amos 7:10 Then Amaziah the priest of Beth El sent to Jeroboam king of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired against you in the midst of the house of Israel. The land is not able to bear all his words.
Luke 23:2–5 They began to accuse him, saying, "We found this man perverting the nation, forbidding paying taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ, a king."

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 22:13 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אלו אֵלָיו֙ שָׁא֔וּל לָ֚מָּה קְשַׁרְתֶּ֣ם עָלַ֔י אַתָּ֖ה וּבֶן יִשָׁ֑י בְּתִתְּךָ֨ ל֜וֹ לֶ֣חֶם וְחֶ֗רֶב וְשָׁא֥וֹל לוֹ֙ בֵּֽאלֹהִ֔ים לָק֥וּם אֵלַ֛י לְאֹרֵ֖ב כַּיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּֽה

Saul said to him, Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread, and a sword, and have inquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX 1 Samuel 22:13 Septuagint · lemma form

καί εἶπον αὐτός σαούλ ἵνα τίς συντίθημι κατά ἐγώ σύ καί ὁ υἱός ιεσσαι δίδωμι σύ αὐτός ἄρτος καί ῥομφαία καί ἐρωτάω αὐτός διά ὁ θεός τίθημι αὐτός ἐπί ἐγώ εἰς ἐχθρός ὡς ὁ ἡμέρα οὗτος

And Saul said to him, Why have you and the son of Jessae conspired against me, that you should give him bread and a sword, and should enquire of God for him, to raise him up against me as an enemy, as he is this day?

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)

וַאֲמַר לֵיהּ שָׁאוּל לְמָה מְרַדְתּוּן עֲלַי אַתְּ וּבַר יִשַׁי בְמַתְּנָךְ לֵיהּ מָזוֹן וְחַרְבָּא וּשְׁאָלִית לֵיהּ בְּמֵימְרָא דַייָ לְמֵיקַם עֲלַי לִכְמָנָא כְּיוֹמָא הָדֵין:

(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 22:13 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

1Sa 22:13 And Saul said unto him, Why have ye conspired against me, thou and the son of Jesse, in that thou hast given him bread, and a sword, and hast enquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?

Ver. 13. Why have ye conspired against me?] This was in Tacitus’s days, Unicum crimen eorum qui omni crimine vacabant, the usual charge brought against the most innocent men; and is still. The Protestants of France, after the massacre of Paris, were reported, but falsely, to have conspired against the king, the queen mother, the king’s brethren, the king of Navarre and the princes of the blood; {a} but the covering proved too short.

{a} Camden’s Elisab.

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.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

22:13 David had deceived Ahimelech into thinking he was on a mission for Saul (21:1-9), so Saul’s accusations of conspiracy were baseless.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(13) And hast enquired of God for him.—This using of the Urim and Thummim for David is again repeated by the king. It seems in Saul’s eyes to have been the gravest of the charges imputed to the high priest by Doeg, for Ahimelech specially in his defence recurs to this point with peculiar insistence: the only charge, as it appears, to which Ahimelech deigned to reply, “Did I then begin to enquire of God for him?” (1Sa_22:15).

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

And Saul said unto him, why have ye conspired against me,

thou, and the son of Jesse?.... No less than treason and rebellion is he charged with, in conjunction with David; the proof follows:

in that thou hast given him bread and a sword; the shewbread, and the sword of Goliath, Sa1 21:6, and so had furnished him with food and arms; one that he suggests was in rebellion against him, and therefore he must be involved in the same crime; but the stronger proof follows

and hast inquired of God for him, that he should rise against me, to lie in wait as at this day: inquired of the Lord for him by Urim and Thummim, to know his mind in this affair, and thereby encouraged him to rise up in rebellion against him, and to lie in wait, as he did at the present time, watching for an opportunity to seize his crown and kingdom.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

And inquiring of God for him. [By allowing him to consult the Urim and Tumim], you have made him a king, because no inquiry may be made of the Urim and Tumim for a commoner.

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 22 words (18 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʼârab (“to lie in wait”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “to lie in wait” (ʼârab) contribute to the verse as a whole?
Deuteronomy 19:11 shares the word «to lie in wait» with this verse. How do the two illuminate each other?
“to” occurs 3× 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 «וַיֹּ֤אמֶר» is Qal Sequential Imperfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Tyndale Open Study Notes read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

This verse counts 22 Hebrew ↔ 36 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 9 words in this verse.
“to” occurs 3× in this single verse.
18 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 22 words in this verse.