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Adriel

Man living at the time of United Monarchy

Adriel married Saul's daughter Merab and had five sons.

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Adriel was the son of Barzillai the Meholathite. King Saul had promised his eldest daughter Merab to David, but instead gave her in marriage to Adriel. Merab bore Adriel five sons. During David's reign, these five sons were handed over to the Gibeonites and put to death to avenge Saul's earlier massacre of the Gibeonites, with whom Israel had a treaty. (1Sa.18.19; 2Sa.21.8).

Family

Father
Barzillai
Spouse or partner
Merab

Bible dictionary

Adriel Easton Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897)

Flock of God, the son of Barzillai, the Meholathite, to whom Saul gave in marriage his daughter Merab (1 Sam. 18:19). The five sons that sprang from this union were put to death by the Gibeonites (2 Sam. 21:8, 9. Here it is said that Michal “brought up” [R.V., “bare”] these five sons, either that she treated them as if she had been their own mother, or that for “Michal” we should read “Merab,” as in 1 Sam. 18:19).

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Adriel Smith Smith’s Bible Dictionary (1863)

(flock of God), son of Barzillai, to whom Saul gave his daughter Merab, although he had previously promised her to David. (1 Samuel 18:19) (B.C. about 1062.) His five sons were amongst the seven descendants of Saul whom David surrendered to the Gibeonites. (2 Samuel 21:8)

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Adriel Hitchcock Hitchcock’s Bible Names Dictionary (1869)

the flock of God

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Adriel Hastings Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible (1898)

A'DRIEL. See Merab.

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Adriel Schaff Schaff’s Dictionary of the Bible

A'DRIEL. See Merab.

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Easton (1897), Smith (1863), Hitchcock (1869), Hastings (1898) and Schaff are in the public domain. Parsed text: neuu-org/bible-dictionary-dataset (CC BY 4.0). Headwords and whitespace normalised for this site.

Where Adriel appears

2 verses in 2 books · English text: BSB (change it from the menu at the top) · Strong’s H5741

1 Samuel1
2 Samuel1

Names, family links and references: STEPBible TIPNR (Tyndale House Cambridge, CC BY 4.0). Short descriptions were drafted with AI assistance by STEPBible. Family links follow STEPBible’s scholarly decisions where genealogies are ambiguous.