What Does Deuteronomy 9:17 Mean?
And I took the two tablets and threw them from my two hands, and broke them before your eyes.
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 I took the two tables, and cast them out of my two hands, and brake them before your eyes.THE KEY
The fracture is itself the message: the rupture stands exposed before your eyes.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of a break made visible: what is held in two hands is cast down and shattered before your eyes. The text lets the rupture remain exposed, without disguising brokenness as wholeness.
THE ROOT
וָאֲשַׁבְּרֵם
va’ashabberem
GROWS FROM
שׁבר
sh-b-r
To break or shatter.
“broke” in this verse is va’ashabberem. The same root names the action of breaking and the condition of being broken. It describes these tablets and, in Psalm 34:18, a broken heart, carrying the image of fracture from what is held in the hands into the inner life.
ALSO GROWS
shavur: Broken.
שָׁבוּר
This form appears in the phrase “broken heart” in Psalm 34:18, linking the tablets’ fracture to the language of inner brokenness.
shever: Breaking, breach, or fracture.
שֶׁבֶר
The noun names the rupture left by breaking, giving the action in this verse a form that can be seen and spoken of.
THE PATTERN
A visible breaking can give an unseen rupture a form that can be seen.
And it came to pass, as soon as he drew near the camp, that he saw the calf and the whirling. And the burning of Moses' anger flared, and he sent the tablets from his hands, and broke them beneath the mountain.And you will say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts; Even so I will shatter this people and this city, as one shatters a potter's vessel that cannot be healed again. And they will bury them in Tophet, until there is no room to bury.And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.THE THREAD
The LORD is near to those whose heart is broken, and delivers those crushed in breath.“Broken heart” uses a form of the same Hebrew root, שבר (sh-b-r), that names the tablets’ breaking. The root carries fracture from what is held in the hands into the inner life.
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