1 Samuel 11:1

Bible in Basic English (1941)

Then about a month after this, Nahash the Ammonite came up and put his forces in position for attacking Jabesh-gilead: and all the men of Jabesh said to Nahash, Make an agreement with us and we will be your servants.

📖 Grammatical Analysis

Original Text

וַיַּ֗עַל נָחָשׁ֙ הָֽעַמּוֹנִ֔י וַיִּ֖חַן עַל־יָבֵ֣שׁ גִּלְעָ֑ד וַיֹּ֨אמְר֜וּ כָּל־אַנְשֵׁ֤י יָבֵישׁ֙ אֶל־נָחָ֔שׁ כְּרָת־לָ֥נוּ בְרִ֖ית וְנַעַבְדֶֽךָּ

Transliteration

And wayyaʿal nāḥāš the ʿammônî and wayyiḥan against yābēš gilʿād and wayyōʾmərû all ʾanšê yābēš to nāḥāš kərāt-lānû bərît and wənaʿabdekā

Grammar Details

• *wayyaʿal*: waw consecutive + Qal imperfect 3rd masculine singular - and he went up
• *nāḥāš*: proper noun, masculine singular - Nahash
• *ʿammônî*: adjective, masculine singular - Ammonite
• *wayyiḥan*: waw consecutive + Qal imperfect 3rd masculine singular - and he encamped
• *yābēš*: proper noun - Jabesh
• *gilʿād*: proper noun - Gilead
• *wayyōʾmərû*: waw consecutive + Qal imperfect 3rd masculine plural - and they said
• *ʾanšê*: construct plural of *ʾîš* - men of
• *kərāt-lānû*: Qal imperative masculine singular + preposition + 1st person plural suffix - cut for us
• *bərît*: noun, feminine singular - covenant
• *wənaʿabdekā*: waw conjunction + Qal imperfect 1st person plural + 2nd person masculine singular suffix - and we will serve you

Word Meanings

• *nāḥāš*: Nahash (name meaning 'serpent')
• *yābēš gilʿād*: Jabesh-Gilead (city name)
• *bərît*: covenant/agreement/treaty
• *naʿabdekā*: serve you/be your subjects/be subservient to you

Referenced Verses

• Judg 21:8 : 8 And they said, Which one of the tribes of Israel did not come up to Mizpah to the Lord? And it was seen that no one had come from Jabesh-gilead to the meeting.
• 1 Sam 12:12 : 12 And when you saw that Nahash, the king of the Ammonites, was coming against you, you said to me, No more of this; we will have a king for our ruler: when the Lord your God was your king.
• 1 Kgs 20:34 : 34 And Ben-hadad said to him, The towns my father took from your father I will give back; and you may make streets for yourself in Damascus as my father did in Samaria. And as for me, at the price of this agreement you will let me go. So he made an agreement with him and let him go.
• Ezek 17:13 : 13 And he took one of the sons of the king and made an agreement with him; and he put him under an oath, and took away the great men of the land:
• Gen 26:28 : 28 And they said, We saw clearly that the Lord was with you: so we said, Let there be an oath between us and you, and let us make an agreement with you;
• Exod 23:32 : 32 Make no agreement with them or with their gods.
• Job 41:4 : 4 Who has ever taken off his outer skin? who may come inside his inner coat of iron?
• Isa 36:16 : 16 Do not give ear to Hezekiah, for this is what the king of Assyria says, Make peace with me, and come out to me; and everyone will be free to take the fruit of his vine and of his fig-tree, and the water of his spring;
• Deut 23:3 : 3 No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their people to the tenth generation may come into the meeting of the Lord's people:
• Judg 10:7 : 7 And the wrath of the Lord was burning against Israel, and he gave them up into the hands of the Philistines and into the hands of the children of Ammon.
• Judg 11:8-9 : 8 And the responsible men of Gilead said to Jephthah, That is the reason we have come back to you; so go with us and make war against the children of Ammon, and we will make you our head over all the people of Gilead. 9 Then Jephthah said to the responsible men of Gilead, If you take me back to make war against the children of Ammon, and if with the help of the Lord I overcome them, will you make me your head? 10 And the responsible men of Gilead said to Jephthah, May the Lord be our witness: we will certainly do as you say. 11 So Jephthah went with the responsible men of Gilead, and the people made him head and chief over them; and Jephthah said all these things before the Lord in Mizpah. 12 Then Jephthah sent men to the king of the children of Ammon, saying, What have you against me that you have come to make war against my land? 13 And the king of the children of Ammon said to the men sent by Jephthah, Because Israel, when he came up out of Egypt, took away my land, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok and as far as Jordan: so now, give me back those lands quietly. 14 And Jephthah sent again to the king of the children of Ammon, 15 And said to him, This is the word of Jephthah: Israel did not take away the land of Moab or the land of the children of Ammon; 16 But when they came up from Egypt, Israel went through the waste land to the Red Sea and came to Kadesh; 17 Then Israel sent men to the king of Edom saying, Let me now go through your land; but the king of Edom did not give ear to them. And in the same way he sent to the king of Moab, but he would not; so Israel went on living in Kadesh. 18 Then he went on through the waste land and round the land of Edom and the land of Moab, and came by the east side of the land of Moab, and put up their tents on the other side of the Arnon; they did not come inside the limit of Moab, for the Arnon was the limit of Moab. 19 And Israel sent men to Sihon, king of the Amorites, the king of Heshbon; and Israel said to him, Let me now go through your land to my place. 20 But Sihon would not give way and let Israel go through his land; and Sihon got together all his people, and put his army in position in Jahaz, and made war on Israel. 21 And the Lord, the God of Israel, gave Sihon and all his people into the hands of Israel, and they overcame them; so all the land of the Amorites, the people of that land, became Israel's. 22 All the limit of the Amorites was theirs, from the Arnon as far as the Jabbok and from the waste land even to Jordan. 23 So now the Lord, the God of Israel, has taken away their land from the Amorites and given it to his people Israel; are you then to have it? 24 Do you not keep the lands of those whom Chemosh your god sends out from before you? So we will keep all the lands of those whom the Lord our God sends out from before us. 25 What! are you any better than Balak, the son of Zippor, king of Moab? Did he ever take up a cause against Israel or make war against them? 26 While Israel was living in Heshbon and its daughter-towns and in Aroer and its daughter-towns and in all the towns which are by the side of the Arnon, for three hundred years, why did you not get them back at that time? 27 So I have done no wrong against you, but you are doing wrong to me in fighting against me: may the Lord, who is Judge this day, be judge between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon. 28 The king of the children of Ammon, however, did not give ear to the words which Jephthah sent to him. 29 Then the spirit of the Lord came on Jephthah, and he went through Gilead and Manasseh, and came to Mizpeh of Gilead; and from Mizpeh of Gilead he went over to the children of Ammon. 30 And Jephthah took an oath to the Lord, and said, If you will give the children of Ammon into my hands, 31 Then whoever comes out from the door of my house, meeting me when I come back in peace from the children of Ammon, will be the Lord's and I will give him as a burned offering. 32 So Jephthah went over to the children of Ammon to make war on them; and the Lord gave them into his hands. 33 And he made an attack on them from Aroer all the way to Minnith, overrunning twenty towns, as far as Abel-cheramim, and put great numbers to the sword. So the children of Ammon were crushed before the children of Israel.
• 1 Sam 31:11-13 : 11 And when the people of Jabesh-gilead had news of what the Philistines had done to Saul, 12 All the fighting men got up and, travelling all night, took Saul's body and the bodies of his sons from the wall of Beth-shan; and they came to Jabesh and had them burned there. 13 And their bones they put in the earth under a tree in Jabesh; and for seven days they took no food.
• Judg 21:10-25 : 10 So they (the meeting) sent twelve thousand of the best fighting-men, and gave them orders, saying, Go and put the people of Jabesh-gilead to the sword without mercy, with their women and their little ones. 11 And this is what you are to do: every male, and every woman who has had sex relations with a man, you are to put to the curse, but you are to keep safe the virgins. And they did so. 12 Now there were among the people of Jabesh-gilead four hundred young virgins who had never had sex relations with a man; these they took to their tents in Shiloh in the land of Canaan. 13 And all the meeting sent to the men of Benjamin who were in the rock of Rimmon, offering them peace. 14 Then Benjamin came back; and they gave them the women whom they had kept from death among the women of Jabesh-gilead: but still there were not enough for them. 15 And the people were moved with pity for Benjamin, because the Lord had let his wrath loose on the tribes of Israel. 16 Then the responsible men of the meeting said, What are we to do about wives for the rest of them, seeing that the women of Benjamin are dead? 17 And they said, How is the rest of Benjamin to be given offspring so that one tribe of Israel may not be put out of existence, 18 Seeing that we may not give them our daughters as wives? For the children of Israel had taken an oath, saying, Cursed is he who gives a wife to Benjamin. 19 And they said, See, every year there is a feast of the Lord in Shiloh, which is to the north of Beth-el, on the east side of the highway which goes up from Beth-el to Shechem, and on the south of Lebonah. 20 And they said to the men of Benjamin, Go into the vine-gardens, waiting there secretly, 21 And watching; and if the daughters of Shiloh come out to take part in the dances, then come from the vine-gardens and take a wife for every one of you from among the daughters of Shiloh, and go back to the land of Benjamin. 22 And when their fathers or their brothers come and make trouble, you are to say to them, Give them to us as an act of grace; for we did not take them as wives for ourselves in war; and if you yourselves had given them to us you would have been responsible for the broken oath. 23 So the men of Benjamin did this, and got wives for themselves for every one of their number, taking them away by force from the dance; then they went back to their heritage, building up their towns and living in them. 24 Then the children of Israel went away from there, every man to his tribe and his family, every man went back to his heritage. 25 In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did what seemed right to him.