1 Kings 13:31 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
1 Kings 13:31
And it came to pass, after he had buried him, that he spake to his sons, saying, When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones:
to inter · verb, qal infinitive construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
spake
וַיֹּ֤אמֶרvai.Yo.mer
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
sons
בָּנָיו֙ba.Nav
H1121
a son (as a builder of the family name) · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
saying
לֵאמֹ֔רle.Mor
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
dead
מוּתmûwth
H4191
to die (literally or figuratively)
bury
וּקְבַרְתֶּ֣םu.ke.var.Tem
H6912
to inter · conjunction + verb, qal sequential perfect, 2nd person masculine plural
sepulchre
בַּקֶּ֕בֶרba.Ke.ver
H6913
a sepulchre · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
man
אִ֥ישׁ'ish
H376
a man as an individual or a male person · noun, common masculine singular construct
God
הָאֱלֹהִ֖יםha.'E.lo.Him
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · definite article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
buried
קָב֣וּרka.Vur
H6912
to inter · verb, qal passive participle, masculine singular absolute
lay
יָנַחyânach
H3240
to deposit
bones
עַצְמֹתָ֔יו'atz.mo.Tav
H6106
a bone (as strong) · noun, common feminine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
beside
אֵ֚צֶל'E.tzel
H681
a side · noun, common both genders singular construct
bones
עַצְמֹתָֽי'atz.mo.Tai
H6106
a bone (as strong) · noun, common feminine plural construct + pronominal suffix
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
2 Kings 23:17-18 Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, which came from Judah,…
Numbers 23:10 Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be…
Psalms 26:9 Gather not my soul with sinners, nor my life with bloody men:
Ecclesiastes 8:10 And so I saw the wicked buried, who had come and gone from the place of the holy, and they were forgotten in the city where they had so done…
Luke 16:22-23 And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Kings 13:23–end
Here is, I. The death of the deceived disobedient prophet. The old prophet that had deluded him, as if he would make him some amends for the wrong he had done him or help to prevent the mischief threatened him, furnished him with an ass to ride home on; but by the way a lion set upon him, and killed him, Kg1 13:23, Kg1 13:24. He did but return back to refresh himself when he was hungry, and behold he must die for it; see Sa1 14:43. But we must consider, 1. That his offence was great, and it would by no means justify him that he was drawn into it by a lie; he could not be so certain of the countermand sent by another as he was of the command given to himself, nor had he any ground to think th…
bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried--His motive in making this request was either that his remains might not be disturbed when the predicted events took place (see Kg2 23:18), or he had some superstitious hope of being benefited at the resurrection by being in the same cave with a man of God.
Next: 1 Kings Chapter 14
Adam Clarke on 1 Kings 13:31
Lay my bones beside his bones - This argues a strong conviction in the mind of the old prophet, that the deceased was a good and holy man of God; and he is willing to have place with him in the general resurrection.
John Gill on 1 Kings 13:31
And it came to pass, after he had buried him, that he spoke to his sons, saying,.... He gave them the following charge:
when I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre wherein the man of God is buried; as it was his own, it might be reasonably thought they would bury him in it without such a charge; but, lest they should not, he gives it:
lay my bones beside his bones; his view in this was, that when Josiah came to burn the bones of the priests, he would spare the bones of this man of God; and so his, lying by them, and mingled with them, would be spared also, and so it proved, 2 Kings 23:18.
The Church Fathers
While this old man insists in saying to his sons that he wants them to bury him, their father, in the grave of the prophet Shemaiah and hopes that his bones will find peace, he represents the allegorical type of an ancient Adam who exhorts and even urges his sons to lower him into baptism, which is the grave of the Emmanuel. Through him all those who have been buried with him through baptism certainly hope for peace and life. On the other hand, when this same old man lies and deceives the other prophet, he represents the Jewish people, about whom we read in the psalm: "But they flattered him with their mouths; they lied to him with their tongues."
Well did the man who had deceived the man of God bury him with honor in his own tomb and give orders that he himself should be buried next to his bones, hoping thus to spare his own bones. He knew that the time would come according to the prophecy of that man of God when Josiah, king of the Jews, would dig up in the land the bones of many dead and with them defile the sacrilegious altars that had been set up for graven images. He spared that tomb where the prophet lay who more than three hundred years before had predicted these things. And because of him the burying place of the man who deceived him was not violated. By that love because of which no one ever hated his own flesh, he provided for his own corpse, while he had slain his soul by deceit. From this fact, then, because each one naturally loves his own flesh, it was punishment for him to learn that he would not be in the tomb of his fathers. So he took care that his bones be spared by burying them next to him whose tomb no one would violate.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Keil & Delitzsch on 1 Kings 13:27-32
He thereupon had his ass saddled, and went and found the corpse and the ass standing by it, without the lion having eaten the corpse or torn the ass in pieces; and he lifted the corpse upon his ass, and brought it into his own city, and laid the corpse in his grave with the customary lamentation: אחו הוי, alas, my brother! (cf., Jer 22:18), and then gave this command to his sons: "When I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried, let my bones rest beside his bones; for the word which he proclaimed in the word of Jehovah upon the altar at Bethel and upon all the houses of the high places in the cities of Samaria will take place" (i.e., will be fulfilled). The expression "cit…
The old prophet probably had a modest grave. Such tombs were hewn out of soft limestone in a wadi (a stream bed) near the person’s home.
Rashi on 1 Kings 13:30
In his own grave. In the graveyard belonging to the false prophet in the city.10Alternatively, “in the grave that he had dug for himself.”—Metzudas Dovid