What Does Deuteronomy 7:6 Mean?
For you are a set-apart people unto the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people of his own treasure, above all the peoples who are upon the face of the ground.
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
For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.THE KEY
Holiness here is belonging: you are set apart as God’s own because he chooses you for himself.
THE MEANING
You are a people set apart to the LORD your God, chosen to belong to him as his treasured possession. Your distinction is named as belonging “unto himself” and as a place above all the peoples of the earth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that God’s claim must be earned: it names you as chosen and belonging to him.
THE ROOT
קָדוֹשׁ
qadosh
GROWS FROM
קדש
Q-D-Sh
To set apart, make sacred, or consecrate.
“Holy” carries the sense of being set apart, and “unto the LORD” gives that setting apart its direction: belonging to God. The same root names both the set-apart quality and the sanctuary, linking this people with what is reserved for God.
ALSO GROWS
qodesh: Holiness; what is sacred or set apart.
קֹדֶשׁ
It shows that “holy” names a state of being set apart, not only a moral quality.
miqdash: Sanctuary; a set-apart place.
מִקְדָּשׁ
It shares the root with “holy,” joining the people set apart to the place set apart for God.
בָּחַר
bachar
GROWS FROM
בחר
B-Ḥ-R
To choose or select.
The Hebrew joins the act of choosing with the status of being chosen. Here, “chosen” leads directly to “unto himself,” so selection is expressed as belonging to God, while the verse also plainly names this people as above the others.
ALSO GROWS
bachir: A chosen one; an elect person.
בָּחִיר
It carries the same root from the act of selecting into the identity of the one selected.
mibchar: Choice; the best or choicest part.
מִבְחָר
It shows the root’s connection to selection and distinction, echoing the verse’s explicit phrase “above all people.”
THE PATTERN
God’s choosing names a people as set apart and treasured as his own.
Now therefore, if you will truly hear and respond to my voice, and guard my covenant, then you shall be my own treasure from among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.But you are a chosen lineage, a royal priesthood, a set-apart nation, a people made his own, so that you may tell out the excellences of the one who called you out of darkness into his wondrous light.Who gave himself for us, that he might loose us from all living without boundary, and cleanse for himself a people that is his own, burning for good works.THE THREAD
Now therefore, if you will truly hear and respond to my voice, and guard my covenant, then you shall be my own treasure from among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.Deuteronomy’s “special people” translates סְגֻלָּה (segullah), meaning a treasured possession; Exodus uses the same Hebrew word as “peculiar treasure.” The shared word opens “people” into “treasure”: the people set apart are also named as God’s own possession.
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