What Does Deuteronomy 14:2 Mean?
For you are a set-apart people to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a treasured people to himself, above all the nations that are upon the face of the ground.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God, and the LORD hath chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the nations that are upon the earth.THE KEY
The verse calls you holy because the LORD claims you as his own treasured possession.
THE MEANING
You belong to the LORD your God as a set-apart people, his own treasured possession among the peoples of the earth. His choosing is the source of this identity; the verse locates belonging in his claim upon you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that you must first make yourself exceptional to belong to God is undone: the verse names the LORD as the one who chooses.
THE ROOT
קָדוֹשׁ
qadosh
GROWS FROM
קדש
To set apart as sacred.
The same root appears in words for sacredness and sanctuary, connecting a set-apart people with a place set apart for God. Here holiness names belonging to the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
qodesh: Sacredness; what is set apart as sacred.
קֹדֶשׁ
It shares the root of “holy” and shows that the verse names a sacred belonging.
miqdash: Sanctuary; a place set apart for God.
מִקְדָּשׁ
The same root marks both a sanctuary and the people described here as set apart.
בָּחַר
bachar
GROWS FROM
בחר
To choose or select.
“chosen” in this verse is bachar. The verse grounds this distinct identity in the LORD’s act of choosing. Words from this root carry both the act of selection and what is selected.
ALSO GROWS
bachir: Chosen one; one selected.
בָּחִיר
It names the person who stands within the act of choosing described in the verse.
mivchar: Choice; the best or choicest selection.
מִבְחָר
It shows the root extending from choosing to what is selected.
THE PATTERN
Being set apart is a belonging given by God, voiced as being his and expressed as a distinct identity.
And you shall be set apart to me, for I, the LORD, am set apart, and I have separated you from the peoples, that you shall be mine.But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, O Jacob, and who shaped you, O Israel. Do not fear, for I have bought you back; I have called you by your name; you are mine.But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a set-apart nation, a people made his own, so that you may tell out the excellences of the one who called you out of darkness into his wondrous light.THE THREAD
Now therefore, if you will truly hear and respond to my voice, and guard my covenant, then you shall be my own treasure from among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.“Peculiar treasure” translates סְגֻלָּה (segullah), meaning a valued possession. The shared word makes the identity in Deuteronomy tangible: you are named as the LORD’s own possession within a covenant relationship.
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