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Passage Research

1 Samuel 16 — Sermon Preparation

God sends Samuel to Bethlehem to anoint Jesse's youngest son David, and David enters Saul's service as a musician to soothe the king's troubled spirit. Below is a research summary for 1 Samuel 16, drawn from openly licensed scholarly databases — original-language morphology, classic sermons from the church fathers through the Puritans, and ancient geography data.

23
verses
373 / 133
Hebrew words / lemmas
7
classic sermon excerpts
4
preachers & commentators

1 Samuel 16 in the Hebrew

Distinctive vocabulary of this chapter, based on original-language morphology.

HebrewTransliterationStrong'sCountGlosses
יִשַׁיYishayH344813Jishai
שְׁמוּאֵלShᵉmûwʼêlH805011Shemuël
שָׁאוּלShâʼûwlH758611Shaul
נָגַןnâganH50595thrum, beat
רוּחַrûwachH73077wind, breath
בֵּית הַלַּחְמִיBêyth hal-LachmîyH10224Beth-lechemite
שָׁלַחshâlachH79717send

How preachers through history handled this text

7 public-domain excerpts on 1 Samuel 16, from the church fathers to the Puritans.

Matthew Henry4Alexander MacLaren1Spurgeon1John Wesley1

“Saul is made a terror to himself. The Spirit of the Lord departed from him. If God and his grace do not rule us, sin and Satan will have possession of us. The devil, by the Divine permission, troubled and terrified Saul, by the corrupt humours of his body, and passions of his mind. He grew fretful, peevish, and discontented, and at times a madman. …”

— Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (Concise), on 1 Samuel 16:14–30 (Public Domain)

Places in the text

Based on ancient-geography data

  • Bethlehem 1— 1 Sam 16:1
  • Ramah 4— 1 Sam 16:13

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