What Does Deuteronomy 31:1 Mean?
Moses went and spoke these words to all Israel.
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
And Moses went and spake these words unto all Israel.THE KEY
The Hebrew root for “spake” and “words” is the same, while Moses’ name means “drawn out”: the one drawn out becomes a voice extending to all Israel.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you as a voice moving toward the whole people: Moses goes, speaks, and the words enter Israel’s shared space. His name carries the sense of “drawn out,” and the Hebrew joins the act of speaking to the words themselves. What is carried outward through one voice reaches the whole community.
THE ROOT
דִּבֶּר
dibber
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
Speak; an utterance or matter.
“spake / words” in this verse is dibber. The Hebrew uses the same root for Moses’ act of speaking and for the words he speaks. The action and its content echo as one family: the words are speech taking form.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: spoke
דִּבֶּר
This is the verb describing what Moses does.
davar: word; matter
דָּבָר
The singular noun shares the root of the verb “spake.”
devarim: words
דְּבָרִים
The plural in the verse makes the shared root audible in both the speaking and what is spoken.
מֹשֶׁה
Mosheh
GROWS FROM
מ־שׁ־ה
Draw out.
Moses’ name carries the meaning “drawn out,” linked in Exodus 2:10 to being drawn out of the water. Here the one named as drawn out goes forth to speak, and his voice extends to all Israel.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: to draw out
מָשָׁה
This verb is the root connected to Moses’ name.
Mosheh: Moses; the one drawn out
מֹשֶׁה
The name carries the root’s image into the verse’s speaker.
THE PATTERN
A word becomes communal when a voice carries it to the people who receive it.
And you will speak to him, and set the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and I will instruct you both in what you will do.For I have given them the words you gave me. They have taken hold of them, and they have known in truth that I came out from you, and they have leaned their full weight on the fact that you sent me.THE THREAD
And you will speak to him, and set the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and I will instruct you both in what you will do.The Hebrew forms for “speak” and “words” both grow from ד־ב־ר (d-b-r, speak; utterance or matter), as they do in Deuteronomy 31:1. Here the words are put in a mouth, showing speech taking form through a voice and moving toward another.
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