What Does Exodus 1:10 Mean?
Come, let us be wise toward them, lest they multiply; and should war meet us, they would also add themselves to our enemies, and fight against us, and rise up out of the land.
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
Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.THE KEY
The “wisdom” here is a plan to contain a people before they become the threat their rulers imagine.
THE MEANING
This verse shows how fear turns a possible future into a present reason to manage a people. Their increase is treated as a threat before they join anyone or fight; the plan is called strategic wisdom. The reader sees how calculation can make containment sound prudent.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the claim that preemptive control is neutral wisdom: a feared future does not make a people enemies in the present.
THE ROOT
נִתְחַכְּמָה
nitchakkemah
GROWS FROM
חכם
ḥ-k-m
to be wise or skillful; to act with skill
“be wise toward” in this verse is nitchakkemah. The same seed gives both wisdom and the person recognized as wise, so this phrase names a mode of calculated skill. Here that skill is directed toward containing a people because of a war that has not happened.
ALSO GROWS
ḥākām: a wise or skilled person
חָכָם
This branch shows that the plan presents itself as the work of capable judgment.
ḥokhmāh: wisdom or skill
חָכְמָה
The shared root makes the ruler’s strategy sound like wisdom even as it aims at control.
יִרְבֶּה
yirbeh
GROWS FROM
רבה
r-b-h
to increase, become many, or grow great
“multiply” in this verse is yirbeh. The root carries the sense of increase and greatness, not only a count of people. The same increase named as flourishing in Exodus 1:7 becomes here the premise for imagining a future enemy.
ALSO GROWS
rav: many or great
רַב
This branch shows how increase can also be described as becoming great in number or stature.
hirbah: to increase or make many
הִרְבָּה
The causative form makes the root’s movement toward greater number explicit.
וְנוֹסַף
wenosaf
GROWS FROM
יסף
y-s-f
to add, increase, or continue
“would also add themselves to our enemies” in this verse is wenosaf. The feared joining is framed as being added: the same root can mean add or increase. The plan treats a people as a possible addition to its enemies, then uses that imagined addition to justify present control.
ALSO GROWS
hosif: to add, increase, or continue
הוֹסִיף
This branch makes the verse’s feared joining visible as an act of addition.
Yosef: Joseph; the name carries the sense “he adds”
יוֹסֵף
The name shares the root, showing how the same seed of adding and increase appears in a person’s name.
THE PATTERN
Fear of a possible future becomes a present plan to contain what may grow or spread.
And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower with its head in the heavens; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered across the face of the whole earth.If we let him go on like this, all will lean their weight into him, and the Romans will come and lift away both our place and our nation.But so that it does not spread further through the people, let us threaten them strictly so that they speak to no one in this nature any longer.THE THREAD
And the children of Israel bore fruit and swarmed and multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.The word translated “multiply” in both verses comes from רבה (r-b-h), meaning to increase or become many. What Exodus 1:7 names as growth filling the land is what Exodus 1:10 recasts as a reason to fear.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us