What Does Deuteronomy 29:25 Mean?
And they will say, "Because they let go of the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he cut with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt."
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 men shall say, Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them forth out of the land of Egypt:THE KEY
The verse places the people’s abandonment beside God’s act of bringing them out: they leave the very bond formed by their release.
THE MEANING
When a people asks why its shared life is desolate, this verse names the fracture: it has abandoned its covenant with the LORD, the God who brings it out of constriction. The ruin bears the mark of leaving the bond through which it was brought out.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A people can leave the covenant that binds it to its deliverer and still expect its shared life to remain whole.
THE ROOT
עָזְבוּ
ʿāzəvû
GROWS FROM
עזב
ʿ-z-b
To leave or abandon.
“let go of” in this verse is ʿāzəvû. The verb means more than failing to observe a rule: it names leaving a bond. Set beside God’s act of bringing the people out, the verse makes their abandonment a departure from the very relationship bound to their release.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāzab: To leave, abandon
עָזַב
This is the root verb in the verse; the people have left the covenant.
ʿāzuv: Forsaken, abandoned
עָזוּב
This related form gives the condition created when something or someone is left behind.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צרר
ṣ-r-r
To bind, confine, or press into narrowness; צַר (tsar) means narrow or constricted.
“Egypt” in this verse is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim carries the image of the two narrows. The verse recalls that God brought the people out of constriction, then places their abandonment of the covenant beside that release.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, tight, constricted
צַר
It names the narrowness carried in the verse’s reference to Egypt.
tsarah: Distress, trouble
צָרָה
The same constricting word-family gives distress the feel of a life pressed into a narrow place.
בְּהוֹצִיאוֹ אֹתָם
behotsi’o otam
GROWS FROM
יצא
y-ṣ-ʾ
To go out or come forth; in a causative form, to bring out.
“brought out” in this verse is behotsi’o otam. The phrase describes God causing the people to go out: their release is something done for them. Beside עָזְבוּ, the sentence holds their leaving against the God who brought them out.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: To go out, come forth
יָצָא
This is the basic movement carried by the root beneath the verse’s phrase.
hotsi: To bring out, lead out
הוֹצִיא
This causative form makes God the one opening the way out for the people.
THE PATTERN
When people abandon the covenant of the one who brought them out, the breach becomes visible in the life that follows.
I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took hold of their hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not remain in my covenant, and I did not tend them, says the LORD.THE THREAD
For my people have done two evils; they have let go of me, the spring of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, shattered cisterns that cannot grip water.Jeremiah uses the same עזב (ʿāzab, leave or abandon) root: the departure named here as covenant-breaking appears there as leaving the source of living water. The broken cisterns make the cost visible: what is left behind cannot hold life.
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