What Does Deuteronomy 8:7 Mean?
For the LORD your God brings you into a good land, a land of streams of waters, of springs and deeps that rise from valleys and hills.
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 the LORD thy God bringeth thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills;THE KEY
The word for the land’s fountains is also the word for eyes: its hidden water rises into view.
THE MEANING
The LORD your God is bringing you into good ground, where water rises from deep places and runs through valleys and hills. The land’s goodness appears in living sources beneath its surface, emerging into view.
THE ROOT
עֵינֹת
ʿênōt
GROWS FROM
עין
ʿayin
Eye; spring or source
The verse calls the springs עֵינֹת, from עַיִן, a word that also means “eye.” A spring is an eye of the ground: water hidden in its depths opens at the surface.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: Eye
עַיִן
The same word names both the eye and the spring, linking an opening in the ground with the place where water comes into view.
maʿyan: Spring or fountain
מַעְיָן
This related word names a water source, keeping the verse’s focus on what rises from within the land.
יֹצְאִים
yōtseʾîm
GROWS FROM
יצא
yatsa
Go out; come forth
“rise” in this verse is yōtseʾîm. The water is not merely present; it is going out from the depths. This root makes the land’s goodness an active emergence from hidden places into the open.
ALSO GROWS
mōtsāʾ: Outlet or source
מוֹצָא
An outlet is the place where what is within comes forth, illuminating the springs that emerge from the land.
hōtsî: Bring out or lead forth
הוֹצִיא
This causative form echoes the movement from hidden depths into visible, flowing water.
THE PATTERN
Life-giving water rises from hidden sources and flows outward to sustain what is above ground.
But a mist rose from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.He sends the springs into the valleys, and they walk between the hills.But whoever drinks of the water I give never thirsts into the ages; the water I give becomes in him a spring of water leaping up into the life of the ages.THE THREAD
He sends the springs into the valleys, and they walk between the hills.Deuteronomy’s עֵינֹת (ʿênōt, “springs”) and Psalm’s מַעְיָנִים (maʿyanim, “springs”) share the עין word family. The psalm pictures those same water sources entering valleys and running among hills, unfolding the landscape described here.
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