What Does Deuteronomy 4:47 Mean?
And they possessed his land, and the land of Og king of Bashan, two kings of the Amorites, who were on this side of the Jordan toward the sunrise;
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 they possessed his land, and the land of Og king of Bashan, two kings of the Amorites, which were on this side Jordan toward the sunrising;THE KEY
The root behind “possessed” names both taking an inheritance and driving others from theirs, so acquisition and dispossession share a seed.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks of possession as a transfer of ground and control: one holds land where another no longer does. Its verb carries inheritance and dispossession within the same root, leaving the displacement inside the idea of possession.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that receiving land is a neutral act, untouched by the loss of those who held it before.
THE ROOT
וַיִּירְשׁוּ
vayyirshu
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
To take possession or inherit; in causative forms, to dispossess or cause someone to inherit.
“possessed” in this verse is vayyirshu. The verb here describes taking possession, while the same root also gives words for inheritance and, in another grammatical form, dispossession. English separates these outcomes; Hebrew keeps them connected, so the transfer of land carries the loss of another’s hold within its language.
ALSO GROWS
yerushah: An inheritance or possession.
יְרֻשָּׁה
Deuteronomy 2:12 uses this noun for Israel’s inherited land while explicitly naming the people displaced from their place.
horish: A causative form of the root that can describe driving one people out or enabling another to inherit.
הוֹרִישׁ
This branch makes explicit the displacement that the simpler act of taking possession can leave unstated.
THE PATTERN
Inheritance is taking hold of a place, and its arrival can mean another power no longer holds it.
And he said to him, I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to take hold of it.But the bowed ones will inherit the land, and they will soften themselves in the abundance of wholeness.Flourishing are the bowed, for they inherit the earth.THE THREAD
The Horim also settled in Seir in former days; but the children of Esau drove them out, and destroyed them from before them, and settled in their place; as Israel did to the land of his possession, which the LORD gave to them.“Possession” here comes from the same ירשׁ (yarash) root as “possessed” in Deuteronomy 4:47. The surrounding words make the root’s edge visible: inheritance and possession stand beside destruction and displacement.
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