Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom to his house, and said to him, Why have your servants set my field on fire?
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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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Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom to his house, and said to him, Why have your servants set my field on fire?
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said unto him, Wherefore have thy servants set my field on fire?
And Joab arose, and he came to Absalom, to the house, and he said to him, “Why did your servants burn with fire the property that to me?”
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.
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom to his house, and said to him, Why have your servants set my field on fire?
Then Joab came to Absalom’s house and demanded, “Why did your servants set my field on fire?”
Then Joab came to Absalom’s house and demanded, “Why did your servants set my field on fire?”
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said unto him, Wherefore have thy servants set my field on fire?
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said unto him, Wherefore have thy servants set my field on fire?
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said unto him, Wherefore have thy servants set my field on fire?
Then Ioab arose, and came to Absalom vnto his house, and sayd vnto him, Wherefore haue thy seruants burnt my field with fire?
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom to his house, and said: Why have thy servants set my corn on fire?
And Joab riseth and cometh unto Absalom in the house, and saith unto him, `Why have thy servants burned the portion that I have with fire?'
And Joab rises and comes to Absalom in the house, and says to him, “Why have your servants burned the portion that I have with fire?”
Then Joab arose and came to Absalom at his house, and said to him, “Why have your servants set my field on fire?”
And Joab arose, and he came to Absalom, to the house, and he said to him, “Why did your servants burn with fire the property that to me?”
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom to [his] house, and said to him, Why have thy servants set my allotment on fire?
Then Joab arose and came to Absalom to his house, and said to him, “Why have your servants set my field on fire?”
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom, to his house, and said to him, Why have thy servants set my field on fire?
Joab went to Absalom's house and asked “Why did your servants set my field on fire?”
Then Joab came to Absalom in his house and said to him, Why have your servants put my field on fire?
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom unto his house, and said unto him: 'Wherefore have thy servants set my field on fire?'
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 →
Shared distinctive vocabulary
הַחֶלְקָ֥ה smoothness H2513 occurs in 25 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
Verb forms
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 23 words from the Hebrew and 23 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 16 Hebrew tokens and 26 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.
וַיָּ֣קָם יוֹאָ֔ב וַיָּבֹ֥א אֶל אַבְשָׁל֖וֹם הַבָּ֑יְתָה וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵלָ֔יו לָ֣מָּה הִצִּ֧יתוּ עֲבָדֶ֛ךָ אֶת הַחֶלְקָ֥ה אֲשֶׁר לִ֖י בָּאֵֽשׁ
Then Joab arose, and came to Absalom to his house, and said to him, Why have your servants set my field on fire?
World English Bible · Public Domain
καί ἀναἵστημι ιωαβ καί ἔρχομαι πρός αβεσσαλωμ εἰς ὁ οἶκος καί εἶπον πρός αὐτός ἵνα τίς ὁ παῖς σύ ἐνπυρίζω ὁ μερίς ὁ ἐμός ἐν πῦρ
And Joab arose, and came to Abessalom into the house, and said to him, Why have your servants set my field on fire?
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.
וְקָם יוֹאָב וַאֲתָא לְוַת אַבְשָׁלוֹם לְבֵיתָא וַאֲמַר לֵיהּ לְמָה אַדְלִיקוּ עַבְדָיִךְ יַת אַחְסַנְתָּא דִילִי בְּנוּרָא:
(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.
2 Samuel, in the Historical, opens this verse with 16 words (14 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is chelqâh (“smoothness”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Commentary
Notes on 2 Samuel 14:31 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.
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.
The Pulpit Commentary
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.