Bible Strands
1 Kings 1:41
Now Adonijah and all his guests were finishing their feast when they heard the sound of the ram’s horn. “Why is the city in such a loud uproar?” asked Joab.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Adonijah and his invited guests are concluding a feast when Joab interrupts to ask why the city is filled with a loud uproar. This occurs immediately after the trumpets sound for Solomon’s procession and just before Jonathan arrives with news.
The words — The Hebrew כִּלּ֣וּ (ki.Lu) marks the guests as having finished their meal, while וַ/יִּשְׁמַ֣ע (va/i.yish.Ma') denotes the sudden hearing of the ram’s horn. These terms anchor the narrative shift from celebration to alarm.
The thread — The sudden horn blast and resulting confusion parallel Joshua’s reaction to the camp’s noise in Exodus 32:17 and the fleeting joy of the wicked described in Job 20:5.
Why it lands — The text records a precise moment where a sound disrupts a concluded feast, prompting a direct question about the city's state. It asks a reader to note how political celebration halts the instant an unexpected noise signals a change in authority.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And Adonijah and all the guests that were with him heard it as they had made an end of eating. And when Joab heard the sound of the trumpet, he said, Wherefore is this noise of the city being in an uproar?
Cross-references
- Exodus 32:17 When Joshua heard the sound of the people shouting, he said to Moses, “The sound of war is in the camp.”
- Job 15:21 Sounds of terror fill his ears; in his prosperity the destroyer attacks him.
- Job 20:5 the triumph of the wicked has been brief and the joy of the godless momentary?
- Psalms 73:18 Surely You set them on slick ground; You cast them down into ruin.
- Proverbs 14:13 Even in laughter the heart may ache, and joy may end in sorrow.
- Ecclesiastes 7:4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.
- Matthew 21:9 The crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed were shouting: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest!”
- Matthew 21:15 But the chief priests and scribes were indignant when they saw the wonders He performed and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”
- Matthew 24:38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark.
- Luke 17:26 Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man: