What Does Deuteronomy 9:26 Mean?
And I prayed to the LORD and said, “O Lord GOD, do not destroy your people and your inheritance, which you have redeemed through your greatness, which you brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.”
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
I prayed therefore unto the LORD, and said, O Lord GOD, destroy not thy people and thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed through thy greatness, which thou hast brought forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand.THE KEY
The plea turns on a completed exit: the people facing destruction are the same people already brought out of constriction by God’s mighty hand.
THE MEANING
You are named here as belonging to God even while the prayer faces the possibility of destruction. The appeal rests on an exit already accomplished: a mighty hand has brought the people out of Egypt. The verse holds threatened loss beside remembered deliverance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a threatened people have already ceased to belong: the prayer still names them as God’s people and inheritance.
THE ROOT
הוֹצֵאתָ
hotsēta
GROWS FROM
יצא
yatsa
To go out, emerge, or depart; in this form, to bring out.
“brought out” in this verse is hotsēta. The Hebrew form behind brought forth is causative: it makes go out into bring out. Egypt is named מִצְרַיִם (Mitzrayim, the two narrows); the plea remembers that God has already carried this people out from constriction.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: To go out or depart.
יָצָא
The simple form names the movement that the verse’s causative form makes possible: the people go out because God brings them out.
yetzi’ah: Going out, departure, or exit.
יְצִיאָה
This noun makes the departure an event and a threshold, echoing the passage out of constriction remembered in the prayer.
חֲזָקָה
ḥazaqah
GROWS FROM
חזק
ḥazaq
To be strong or firm; to strengthen.
The mighty hand is described with a word from the root of being strong and making firm. Here strength is the force that makes the people’s exit real.
ALSO GROWS
ḥazaq: To be strong, firm, or prevail.
חָזַק
The root verb names strength as a state of firmness, giving the mighty hand a quality of steadiness.
ḥizzēq: To strengthen or make firm.
חִזֵּק
The same consonants turn strength into an action, fitting the hand that carries the people out.
THE PATTERN
Preservation is asked on the ground of belonging and deliverance already established.
Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the loads of the Egyptians, and I will snatch you from their service, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments.But now, thus says the LORD, who created you, O Jacob, and who shaped you, O Israel. Do not fear, for I have bought you back; I have called you by your name; you are mine.Who has brought us out of the authority of darkness and has moved us into the governance of the Son of his love.THE THREAD
And it came to be on this very bone of the day, that the LORD brought the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts.Both verses use forms of יָצָא (yatsa, go out): Deuteronomy says God brought the people out, while Exodus names that same bringing out directly. The exit is the remembered ground for the plea that the people not be destroyed.
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