1 Kings 20:10 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
1 Kings 20:10
And Benhadad sent unto him, and said, The gods do so unto me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that follow me.
to send away · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
said
וַיֹּ֕אמֶרvai.Yo.mer
H559
to say (used with great latitude) · conjunction + verb, qal sequential imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
gods
אֱלֹהִ֖ים'E.lo.Him
H430
gods in the ordinary sense · noun, common masculine plural absolute
so
יַעֲשׂ֥וּןya.'a.Sun
H6213
to do or make · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural + paragogic nun
also
יוֹסִ֑פוּyo.Si.fu
H3254
to add or augment (often adverbial · verb, hiphil imperfect, 3rd person masculine plural
dust
עֲפַ֣ר'a.Far
H6083
dust (as powdered or gray) · noun, common masculine singular construct
Samaria
שֹׁמְר֔וֹןsho.me.Ron
H8111
Shomeron · proper noun, a place name
suffice
יִשְׂפֹּק֙yis.Pok
H5606
to clap the hands (in token of compact · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person masculine singular
handfuls
לִשְׁעָלִ֕יםlish.'a.Lim
H8168
the palm · preposition + noun, common masculine plural absolute
people
הָעָ֖םha.'Am
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
follow
בְּרַגְלָֽיbe.rag.Lai
H7272
a foot (as used in walking) · preposition + noun, common feminine dual 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
1 Kings 19:2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of the…
Exodus 11:8 And all these thy servants shall come down unto me, and bow down themselves unto me, saying, Get thee out, and all the people that follow th…
Judges 4:10 And Barak called Zebulun and Naphtali to Kedesh; and he went up with ten thousand men at his feet: and Deborah went up with him.
2 Samuel 17:12-13 So shall we come upon him in some place where he shall be found, and we will light upon him as the dew falleth on the ground: and of him and…
2 Kings 19:23-24 By thy messengers thou hast reproached the Lord, and hast said, With the multitude of my chariots I am come up to the height of the mountain…
Isaiah 10:13-14 For he saith, By the strength of my hand I have done it, and by my wisdom; for I am prudent: and I have removed the bounds of the people, an…
Isaiah 37:24-25 By thy servants hast thou reproached the Lord, and hast said, By the multitude of my chariots am I come up to the height of the mountains, t…
Acts 23:12 And when it was day, certain of the Jews banded together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink t…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on 1 Kings 20:1-11
Here is, I. The threatening descent which Ben-hadad made upon Ahab's kingdom, and the siege he laid to Samaria, his royal city, Kg1 20:1. What the ground of the quarrel was we are not told; covetousness and ambition were the principle, which would never want some pretence or other. David in his time had quite subdued the Syrians and made them tributaries to Israel, but Israel's apostasy from God makes them formidable again. Asa had tempted the Syrians to invade Israel once (Kg1 15:18-20), and now they did it of their own accord. It is dangerous bringing a foreign force into the country: posterity may pay dearly for it. Ben-hadad had with him thirty-two kings, who were either tributaries to h…
Thus said Ben-hadad, Thy silver and thy gold is mine--To this message sent him during the siege, Ahab returned a tame and submissive answer, probably thinking it meant no more than an exaction of tribute. But the demand was repeated with greater insolence; and yet, from the abject character of Ahab, there is reason to believe he would have yielded to this arrogant claim also, had not the voice of his subjects been raised against it. Ben-hadad's object in these and other boastful menaces was to intimidate Ahab. But the weak sovereign began to show a little more spirit, as appears in his abandoning "my lord the king" for the single "tell him," and giving him a dry but sarcastic hint to glory n…
If the dust of Samaria shall suffice - This is variously understood. Jonathan translates thus: "If the dust of Shomeron shall be sufficient for the soles of the feet of the people that shall accompany me;" i.e., I shall bring such an army that there will scarcely be room for them to stand in Samaria and its vicinity.
John Gill on 1 Kings 20:10
And Benhadad sent unto him, and said,.... That is, to Ahab:
the gods do so unto me, and more also; bring greater evils upon me than I can think or express:
if the dust of Samaria shall suffice for handfuls for all the people that follow me, signifying that he made no doubt of it of reducing it to dust by numbers of men he should bring with him, which would be so many, that if each was to take an handful of dust of the ruins of Samaria, there would not enough for them all; which was an hectoring and parabolical speech, uttered in his wrath and fury.
The Church Fathers
"May the gods do so to me, and more also, etc." [1 Kings 20:10] What Benhadad king of Syria, besieging and beginning to assault Samaria said: 'May the gods do so to me, and more also, if the dust of Samaria will be enough to fill the hands of all the people who follow me,' has this sense: Samaria, like other cities, had earth inside near the walls, almost equal to the walls, lest the walls standing without the support of the adjacent earth, should be frequently struck down by the assaulting hand with the battering ram." From the outside, the height of the walls far exceeded the surface of the ground, especially since, as Scripture relates, the city itself had been set on the summit of a mountain. Therefore, the haughty king, threatening the besieged city, said that he had such a multitude of troops with him that even if each of his soldiers brought only one stone, or clod, or log to construct a rampart against the city, such a high rampart could rise from it that the surface of the city itself, which was within the walls, would seem equal, so that they might fight on an equal footing against the city, sending missiles or torches. The king of Israel, restraining the king of Syria's arrogance with a modest utterance, said, "Say to him: Let not him who girds on his armor boast as he who takes it off." There is a difference between a man who is girded, a man who is ungirded, and a man who is not girded. A man who is girded is one who walks about with a belt; an ungirded man is one who recently took off his belt, for example, to enter a bath, or to get into bed, or perhaps to put on another tunic; a man who is not girded is one who, having recently put on a tunic, has not yet fortified himself with the addition of a belt. Thus, one who is in a military expedition can rightly be called girded, that is, armed. One who has returned home victoriously from a battle, having laid down his arms, is rightly called ungirded, because he wields the repose of peace longed for. One who has not yet begun to fight, nor begun to prepare for the contest, is rightly called not girded. Therefore, the king of Israel said to the king of Syria, boasting that he had already captured Samaria, which he had begun to besiege, "Let not him who girds on his armor boast as he who takes it off." As if to say plainly: Do not boast as if you were already the victor of war's peril, who, still set…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Ahab — Father’s brother. (1.) The son of Omri, whom he succeeded as the seventh king of Israel. His history is recorded in 1 Kings 16-22. His wife was Jezebel (q.v.), who exercised a very evil influence…
Samaria — A watch-mountain or a watch-tower. In the heart of the mountains of Israel, a few miles north-west of Shechem, stands the “hill of Shomeron,” a solitary mountain, a great “mamelon.” It is an oblong…
Boasting · .Ben-hadad — .Ben-hadad
Samaria, Ancient · Samaria the capital of: Besieged by Benhadad — Samaria the capital of: Besieged by Benhadad
Syria · Benhadad king of, besieged Samaria — Benhadad king of, besieged Samaria
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Keil & Delitzsch on 1 Kings 20:1-22
The First Victory. - Kg1 20:1. Benhadad, the son of that Benhadad who had conquered several cities of Galilee in the reign of Baasha (Kg1 15:20), came up with a great army - there were thirty-two kings with him, with horses and chariots - and besieged Samaria. The thirty-two kings with him (אתּו) were vassals of Benhadad, rulers of different cities and the territory belonging to them, just as in Joshua's time almost every city of Canaan had its king; they were therefore bound to follow the army of Benhadad with their troops.
Kg1 20:2-7
During the siege Benhadad sent messengers into the city to Ahab with this demand: "Thy silver and thy gold are mine, and the best of thy wives and thy sons ar…
Ben-hadad’s third delegation delivered an ultimatum: Surrender or die. His caustic threat to thoroughly plunder Samaria was reinforced with a curse, an example of the psychological warfare often practiced in the ancient Near East (see 2 Kgs 18:19-35). • Ahab’s third reply to Ben-hadad contained proverbial wisdom. The outcome of the conflict was not yet sealed.
Rashi on 1 Kings 20:10
If the dust of Shomron will be sufficient for the soles of the feet, etc. [Targum Yonoson rendered,] “to take with the footsteps of all the people who are with me,” the earth that sticks to the sole of the feet.5Alternatively, שעלים means fistfuls, and Ben-Hadad said, that if each of his soldiers was to take a fistful of the dirt of Shomron, there would not be enough dirt for them, for his army was so large.—Radak
For the soles of the feet. An expression of, “treading with the sole of the foot,” and similarly, “in a narrow path [משעול] of the vineyards,”6Bamidbar 22:24. and similarly, “who measured the water with his step [בשעלו],”7Yeshayahu 40:12. for He trod in the Red Sea, as it is state…
