1 Kings 1:21 - Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Bible Comments

Shall sleep - This euphemism for death, rare in the early Scriptures - being found only once in the Pentateuch (margin reference.), and once also in the historical books before Kings 2 Samuel 7:12 - becomes in Kings and Chronicles the ordinary mode of speech (see 1 Kings 2:10; 1 Kings 11:43, etc.; 2Ch 9:31; 2 Chronicles 12:16, etc.). David uses the metaphor in one psalm Psalms 13:3. In the later Scriptures it is, of course, common. (Jeremiah 51:39; Daniel 12:2; Matthew 9:24; John 11:11; 1 Corinthians 11:30; 1Co 15:51; 1 Thessalonians 4:14, etc.)

1 Kings 1:21

21 Otherwise it shall come to pass, when my lord the king shall sleep with his fathers, that I and my son Solomon shall be counted offenders.e