---
title: 1 Samuel 22:21 (JPS 1917) — And Abiathar told David that Saul had slain the LORD'S priests. · tree and pragmatics
description: And Abiathar told David that Saul had slain the LORD'S priests. Who acts: Abiathar, Saul. 1 Samuel 22:21 in JPS 1917 with its dependency tree and the pragmatics of every clause.
---

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# 1 Samuel 22:21 · JPS 1917

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And Abiathar told David that Saul had slain the LORD'S priests.

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**Who acts:** Abiathar, Saul · **What happens:** tell, slay · **To what, where:** David, priests · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is 1 Samuel 22:21 · JPS 1917 in the English of the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation, from Mova's open Bible corpus. The page gives the sentence's syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies, parsed by Mova and checked by a teacher model — and its pragmatics clause by clause: who acts (Abiathar, Saul), what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it. The original of the verse links back to its own tree and to the Targum.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = jps:1SA:657
# text = And Abiathar told David that Saul had slain the LORD'S priests.
1	And	and	CCONJ	CC	_	3	cc	_	_
2	Abiathar	Abiathar	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	nsubj	_	_
3	told	tell	VERB	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	0	root	_	_
4	David	David	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	3	iobj	_	_
5	that	that	SCONJ	IN	_	8	mark	_	_
6	Saul	Saul	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	8	nsubj	_	_
7	had	have	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	8	aux	_	_
8	slain	slay	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part	3	ccomp	_	_
9	the	the	DET	DT	Definite=Def|PronType=Art	10	det	_	_
10	LORD	LORD	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	12	nmod:poss	_	_
11	'S	's	PART	POS	_	10	case	_	_
12	priests	priest	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	8	obj	_	_
13	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	3	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

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- form: statement
- act: narrate
- voice: narrator
- polarity: none
- teacher: kept the draft

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| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **tell** *speech: assert* | past | Abiathar |  | David |  |  |  | vn transfer\_mesg-37.1.1-1-1 «NP V NP S\_INF»: agent=Agent david=Recipient clause=Topic |
| 2 | **slay** | past · perfect | Saul | the LORD's priests |  |  |  |  | vn murder-42.1 «NP V NP»: agent=Agent priest=Patient |

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One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

## The Hebrew of this verse {#hebrew}

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וַיַּגֵּ֥ד אֶבְיָתָ֖ר לְדָוִ֑ד כִּ֚י הָרַ֣ג שָׁא֔וּל אֵ֖ת כֹּהֲנֵ֥י יְהוָֽה׃

[1 Samuel 22:21: the Hebrew tree, its pragmatics and Targum Jonathan →](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/neviim/1SA.22.21/)

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**Source.** The Holy Scriptures according to the Masoretic Text, Jewish Publication Society, 1917, from eBible.org: public domain. Sentence `jps:1SA:657` of Mova's parse database.

**The tree and the speech act** come from Mova's cycle: the small model's draft, read by a large model as teacher, passed by Mova's gates (Elamur Cosmic License). **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the chapter read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence of the chapter.

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