(יב) וְדָוִד֩ בֶּן־אִ֨ישׁ אֶפְרָתִ֜י הַזֶּ֗ה מִבֵּ֥ית לֶ֙חֶם֙ יְהוּדָ֔ה וּשְׁמ֣וֹ יִשַׁ֔י וְל֖וֹ שְׁמֹנָ֣ה בָנִ֑ים וְהָאִישׁ֙ בִּימֵ֣י שָׁא֔וּל זָקֵ֖ן בָּ֥א בַאֲנָשִֽׁים׃
David was the son of a certain Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah whose name was Jesse. He had eight sons, and in the days of Saul the man was already old, advanced in years.*
*Or “the man was an elder among the notables”; cf. Rashi and Gersonides. Meaning of Heb. uncertain.
(The above rendering in the footnote comes from the RJPS translation, an adaptation of the NJPS translation. Before accounting for this rendering, I will analyze the plain sense of the Hebrew term containing אִישׁ—and in this case, also its plural form אֲנָשִׁים—by employing a situation-oriented construal as outlined in this document, pp. 11–16.)
The highlighted instance of אִישׁ (which is its second instance in this verse) is employed in order to admit into the discourse a crucial piece of characterizing information about the participant in question. It marks that information as essential for grasping the depicted situation. This is a classic function of the situating noun.
As for what exactly is being predicated about Jesse—which involves the term אֲנָשִׁים—the phrase is difficult; it has no exact peer. The adjective זָקֵן “old man; elder” famously resides in both the semantic domain of age-grades and the domain of social station. Which meaning is intended here?
Rashi, Gersonides, and the review by the Hebrew Old Testament Text Project of the United Bible Societies (HOTTP, 1969–1980) construe the phrasing in terms of social station.
- Rashi: נמנה בכנסיות החשובים “he is counted in the gatherings of the important ones.”
- Gersonides: לגודל מעלתו היה בא, כאשר יבא עם חברה נכבדת מאנשים שלמים רבים היו מלוים אותו. “To the greatness of his status he would come [and go] ... a respectable company consisting of many people of integrity would accompany him.”
- The HOTTP-recommended understanding is: “an elder notable among men; an elder, distinguished among men.”
Assessing the grammatical and semantic support for their views, we can observe that in Josh 23:7, 12, this same combination of participle and preposition (בָּא בַ) indeed seems to be an idiom that means something like “associating with.” Meanwhile, אֲנָשִׁים in this expression can mean “notables,” derived as follows. Prototypically, אֲנָשִׁים operates mainly on the discourse level and marks a participant as being essential for grasping the depicted situation. Arguably this instance, however, is an exploitation of that normal usage of אֲנָשִׁים, in which its discourse-level meaning is recast on the informational level as something like “those who matter”—i.e., notables. (The exemplar of such an exploitation is Num 13:3.)
Such a construal does indeed seem to be the plain sense, for it yields a text that is informative and coherent. The narrator’s observation that Jesse is prominent and influential is more informative (salient to the narrative) than is his age. Namely, it explains why people are initially receptive to his son David. And it is more consistent, given that Jesse’s advanced age is not noted anywhere else, whereas his prominent status is repeatedly implied: 3 different voices refer to him as “Jesse the Bethlehemite” (1 Sam 16:1, 18; 17:58), i.e., as someone who is well known beyond his hometown.
As for rendering into English, the NJPS ‘the man was already old, advanced in years’ apparently follows two ancient translations—the Septuagint’s Lucianic rescension and the Syriac—which seem to reflect a different Hebrew base text. (Cf. Gen 24:1 וְאַבְרָהָם זָקֵן בָּא בַּיָּמִים, which is about age.) Alongside that possibility, in the footnote, I now propose a rendering of the Masoretic text itself.