What Does Deuteronomy 2:10 Mean?
The Emim settled there in former days, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim.
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
The Emims dwelt therein in times past, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakims;THE KEY
The Emim’s name means “terrors,” so the verse’s picture of a numerous, towering people is already carried inside their name.
THE MEANING
This verse holds a name for dread beside visible scale: the Emim are numerous and tall like the Anakim. Terror takes shape here as both a people and the name by which they are remembered.
THE ROOT
אֵמִים
ʾēmîm
GROWS FROM
אימ
ʾ-y-m
Terror or dread; the force of what inspires fear.
The name Emim is understood as “terrors,” linked to the Hebrew word for dread. The verse’s “great, and many, and tall” makes that name tangible through number and stature.
ALSO GROWS
ʾēmāh: Terror, dread.
אֵימָה
This noun reveals the fear-bearing sense behind the Emim’s name.
ʾiyyōm: Terrifying, dreadful.
אִיּוֹם
This related word describes something that carries the same quality of dread encoded in “Emim.”
THE PATTERN
Dread becomes tangible when a threatening presence seems greater than the self.
"Where shall we go up? Our brothers have melted our heart, saying, the people are greater and taller than we are; the cities are great and walled up to the heavens; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there."And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, who come from the giants; and we were in our own eyes as grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes.And loosen those who through fear of death were held in slavery throughout all their living.THE THREAD
They too were counted Rephaim, like the Anakim; but the Moabites call them Emim.The next verse names the same people among the giants and identifies “Emims” as what the Moabites call them. Beside the meaning “terrors,” the name holds the dread their immense stature evokes.
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