| 12. Linguistic Exegesis The narrative vav-consecutive in vayira {וַיִּרָ֥א | wayyirāʾ} ‘and he was afraid’ propels the storyline and introduces Saul’s fear. The compound preposition mi-lifnê {מִלִּפְנֵ֣י | mi-lifnê} ‘from before’ situates that fear in David’s presence. The conjunction kî {כִּי־ | kî} ‘because’ marks the causal link, leading to the central clause hāyâ Yahweh ʿimmô {הָיָה יְהוָה עִמּוֹ | hāyâ Yəhôwāh ʿimmô} ‘the LORD was with him’. In contrast, û-mê-ʿim Šāʾûl sār {וּמֵעִ֥ם שָׁא֖וּל סָֽר | û-mê-ʿim šāʾûl sār} ‘and had departed from Saul’ completes a chiastic parallelism that highlights divine presence and absence. The perfect tense of hāyâ and sār denotes completed actions, and the shift from verb-initial Hebrew to subject-verb-object English preserves both theological emphasis and narrative clarity. |