I was reading 1 Samuel this evening and was struck by chapter 2, verse 25:
כה אִם-יֶחֱטָא אִישׁ לְאִישׁ, וּפִלְלוֹ אֱלֹהִים, וְאִם לַיהוָה יֶחֱטָא-אִישׁ, מִי יִתְפַּלֶּל-לוֹ; וְלֹא יִשְׁמְעוּ לְקוֹל אֲבִיהֶם, כִּי-חָפֵץ יְהוָה לַהֲמִיתָם.
"If someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him, but if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him?" But they would not listen to the voice of their father, for it was the will of the Lord to put them to death.
When I first read this, I speculated that maybe some Calvinist was overinterpreting a vav ("and"), but looking at the Hebrew, I found ki instead. The above is the ESV; other translations have "because" in this verse, with essentially the same meaning.
I looked at Brown-Driver-Briggs and found a plethora of meanings for ki, most of which don't seem to fit here. The one that might fit was this:
- concessive: even when, even though
But the only citations are Isaiah 16:12 (which doesn't seem very convincing) and Ecclesiastes 4:14 (which does).
Is it reasonable, or even possible, to take ki in 1 Samuel 2:25 as meaning "even though" rather than "because"?