What Does Exodus 1:20 Mean?
Therefore God did good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew bone-strong exceedingly.
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
Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.THE KEY
The verse places God’s enacted goodness to the midwives beside the people’s multiplying, so goodness appears as life that pressure cannot stop.
THE MEANING
God deals well with the midwives, while the people multiply and become exceedingly strong. You are seeing a living pattern: pressure does not set the final measure of what protected life can become. Goodness and increase stand together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that threatened life must inevitably shrink: pressure does not hold the final measure of what can grow.
THE ROOT
וַיֵּיטֶב
vayyēṭev
GROWS FROM
יטב
to be good; to do good
“did good to” in this verse is vayyēṭev. The Hebrew verb carries the force of active good: the same root can mean to be good and to do good. Here goodness is enacted toward the midwives, beside the people’s increase.
ALSO GROWS
yāṭav: be good, be pleasing
יָטַב
This form shares the root יטב and shows goodness as a quality that can be present and experienced.
hēṭîv: do good, treat well
הֵיטִיב
This form shares the root יטב and makes explicit the active sense carried by “dealt well.”
וַיִּרֶב
vayyirev
GROWS FROM
רבה
to become many; to increase
“multiplied” in this verse is vayyirev. The root can describe becoming many or making many. Here the people are becoming numerous, so multiplication appears as a continuing process of growth.
ALSO GROWS
rāvâ: become many, increase
רָבָה
This form shares the root רבה and shows the people’s increase as growth over time.
hirbâ: make many, multiply
הִרְבָּה
This form shares the root רבה and reveals the causative side of the same increase.
וַיַּעַצְמוּ
vayyaʿaṣmû
GROWS FROM
עצם
to become mighty or strong
“grew bone-strong exceedingly” in this verse is vayyaʿaṣmû. The people are not only increasing in number; they are growing strong. The same consonants name both becoming mighty and might itself, pairing multiplication with strength.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāṣam: become mighty, grow strong
עָצַם
This verb shares the root עצם and makes the people’s growing strength explicit.
ʿōtsem: might, strength
עֹצֶם
This noun shares the root עצם and shows the strength contained in the people’s becoming mighty.
THE PATTERN
Life kept from destruction continues to increase, even under pressure.
But the more they bent them low, the more they multiplied and burst forth. And they recoiled from the face of the children of Israel.And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Bear fruit and multiply, and fill the earth, and tread it under your foot, and rule over the fish of the sea, and over the winged of the heavens, and over every living thing that creeps upon the earth."But the word of God kept growing and multiplying.THE THREAD
Do good, O LORD, to the good, and to those straight in their hearts.The psalm’s “Do good” is הֵיטִיבָה (hēṭîvāh, “do good”), from the same root יטב as “dealt well” in Exodus. The shared root shows goodness as an action that meets people, not only a quality attributed to God.
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