What Does Deuteronomy 7:17 Mean?
If you say in your heart, These nations are more than I; how can I drive them out?
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
If thou shalt say in thine heart, These nations are more than I; how can I dispossess them?THE KEY
The Hebrew verb translated “dispossess” belongs to the same root family as “inherit,” holding removal and receiving together in one word.
THE MEANING
When what stands before you seems greater than you, the question “How can I dispossess them?” rises in the heart. The Hebrew verb also carries the sense of taking possession or inheriting, so the word holds both what must be removed and what may be received.
THE ROOT
לְהוֹרִישָׁם
ləhorisham
GROWS FROM
י־ר־ש
y-r-sh
Take possession, inherit; in a causative form, dispossess.
“drive them out” in this verse is ləhorisham. Here the verb is in a causative form meaning “to dispossess”; other forms of the same root name an heir and an inheritance. Hebrew holds clearing a prior claim and entering possession within one word family, so the question carries both removal and receiving.
ALSO GROWS
yōrēsh: An heir; one who takes possession.
יוֹרֵשׁ
This branch shows the receiving side of the root behind “dispossess.”
yerushah: An inheritance or possession.
יְרֻשָּׁה
This branch names what can be received through the same root family.
THE PATTERN
When opposition looks greater than the self, the text places its visible measure beside a sustaining presence and refuses to treat it as the only measure.
When you go out to battle against your enemies, and you see horses and chariots, and a people more than you, do not fear them, for the LORD your God is with you, who lifted you up out of the land of Egypt.We are pressed on every side, yet not cramped into a narrow place; we are without a way through, yet not without a way out.Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not look about in dismay, for I am your God. I will grip you, and I will help you, and I will hold you up with the right hand of my alignment.THE THREAD
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.The same root, יָרַשׁ (yārash, “take possession” or “inherit”), appears in both verses: Genesis renders it “inherit,” while Deuteronomy uses its causative form for “dispossess.” The shared root holds receiving and removal together while leaving Deuteronomy’s hard language about dispossessing nations intact.
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