3 Kings 1:3
So they sought a beautiful young woman in all the coasts of Israel, and they found Abisag a Sunamitess, and brought her to the king.
Open 3 Kings 1:3 in the Motif Searcher, word by word across all five texts →Show on the spiral →The verse in its languages
- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Quæsierunt igitur adolescentulam speciosam in omnibus finibus Israël, et invenerunt Abisag Sunamitidem, et adduxerunt eam ad regem.
- Septuagint (Swete)
- καὶ ἐζήτησαν νεάνιδα καλὴν ἐκ παντὸς ὁρίου Ἰσραήλ· καὶ εὗρον τὴν Ἀβεισὰ τὴν Σωμανεῖτιν, καὶ ἤνεγκαν αὐτὴν πρὸς τὸν βασιλέα.
- Hebrew (WLC)
- וַיְבַקְשׁוּ֙ נַעֲרָ֣ה יָפָ֔ה בְּכֹ֖ל גְּב֣וּל יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וַֽיִּמְצְא֗וּ אֶת אֲבִישַׁג֙ הַשּׁ֣וּנַמִּ֔ית וַיָּבִ֥אוּ אֹתָ֖הּ לַמֶּֽלֶךְ
Haydock's commentary
Sunamitess. Sunam was not far from Thabor, in the tribe of Issachar. (Calmet)
This history leads us to explain the ambition and death of Adonias. (Haydock)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, To Nepotian
2. But that I may not seem to quote only profane literature, listen to the mystical teaching of the sacred writings. Once David had been a man of war, but at seventy age had chilled him so that nothing would make him warm. A girl is accordingly sought from the coasts of Israel, Abishag the Shunamite, to sleep with the king and warm his aged frame. Does it not seem to you, if you keep to the letter that killeth, like some farcical story or some broad jest from an Atellan play? A chilly old man is wrapped up in blankets, and only grows warm in a girl’s embrace. Bathsheba was still living, Abigail was still left, and the remainder of those wives and concubines whose names the Scripture mentions. Yet they are all rejected as cold, and only in the one young girl’s embrace does the old man become warm. Abraham was far older than David; still, so long as Sarah lived he sought no other wife. …