What Does Deuteronomy 2:32 Mean?
Then Sihon came out to meet us, he and all his people, for battle at Jahaz.
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
Then Sihon came out against us, he and all his people, to fight at Jahaz.THE KEY
The same Hebrew verb used for Sihon’s advance also names Israel’s going out from Egypt: the root marks emergence, while the context gives it direction.
THE MEANING
The force facing you steps into open conflict, and Sihon comes with his entire people. The verse names the encounter plainly as battle at Jahaz.
THE ROOT
וַיֵּצֵא
wayyēṣēʾ
GROWS FROM
יצא
y-ṣ-ʾ
Go out, come out, emerge.
“came out” in this verse is wayyēṣēʾ. The verb presents Sihon moving outward into an encounter; the phrase “he and all his people” makes that emergence collective. The same root can name a departure from constriction, so the verb itself does not determine whether going out brings attack or escape.
ALSO GROWS
hōṣîʾ: To bring something or someone out.
הוֹצִיא
This causative form makes the same outward movement something done for another; here Sihon himself moves out to meet you.
môṣāʾ: A way out or point from which something goes forth.
מוֹצָא
This branch keeps the root’s sense of movement from within to without, illuminating the force of “came out” as an arrival into open encounter.
THE PATTERN
Going out makes a movement visible; what it moves toward or away from reveals its purpose.
And it came to be at the end of four hundred and thirty years, and on this very bone of the day it came to be, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.And Deborah said to Barak, Rise, for this is the day in which the LORD has given Sisera into your hand. Has not the LORD gone out before you? And Barak went down from the mountain of Tabor, and ten thousand men after him.And he said to them, "Let us go into the neighboring towns, so that I may herald there also, for this is why I came out."THE THREAD
And it came to be at the end of four hundred and thirty years, and on this very bone of the day it came to be, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.The Hebrew verb יצא (yatsaʾ, to go out or emerge) names Sihon’s movement here and Israel’s movement out of Egypt there. One root holds both; the surrounding words show whether the emergence carries hostility or departure from constriction.
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