What Does Exodus 10:17 Mean?
Now therefore, release my falling short, I pray, only this once, and plead with the LORD your God, so that he may remove from me only this death.
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
Now therefore forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and intreat the LORD your God, that he may take away from me this death only.THE KEY
The plea to “forgive” is literally an appeal to lift the speaker’s sin, picturing pardon as the removal of a carried burden.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks into a narrowed moment: wrongdoing is named as “my sin” and treated as a burden that can be lifted. Death, too, is named directly, and the plea asks for it to be removed; “this once” and “this death only” make the urgency unmistakable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a named wrong can only cling to you: the plea calls it “my sin” and asks for it to be lifted.
THE ROOT
שָׂא
śāʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
lift, carry, bear
“release” in this verse is śāʾ. In the plea, שָׂא (śāʾ, lift) comes from נשא (nasa, lift, carry, bear), the verb behind “forgive.” The related מַשָּׂא (massa, burden) keeps the image of a load in view: this request pictures pardon as lifting what is being carried.
ALSO GROWS
nasa: lift, carry, bear
נָשָׂא
This is the root verb behind the plea’s “lift”; its consonants connect pardon with bearing something away.
massa: burden, load
מַשָּׂא
This noun shares the נשא (nasa, lift, carry, bear) root and names the kind of load the plea pictures being lifted.
חַטָּאתִי
chattaʾti
GROWS FROM
חטא
miss, go wrong, miss the mark
The word rendered “sin” comes from חטא (chata, miss or go wrong), also seen in חֵטְא (chet, a miss or sin). The confession names what has gone off course while asking for it to be lifted, linking acknowledgment with release rather than concealment.
ALSO GROWS
chata: to miss, go wrong, sin
חָטָא
This verb shares the root’s חטא consonants and gives “my sin” the concrete sense of a miss or wrong turn.
chet: a miss, sin
חֵטְא
This noun carries the same חטא root, preserving the image of what has missed its mark.
THE PATTERN
Release is pictured as lifting the weight of wrongdoing and bearing it away.
Guarding faithful love for thousands, carrying crookedness, rebellion, and falling short, and who does not clear the guilty, visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth generation.A Psalm of David, Maschil. Flourishing is the one whose rebellion is released, whose shortcoming is covered.Who himself carried our shortcomings in his own body on the tree, that we, dead to shortcomings, might live to alignment; and by his bruises you were healed.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David, Maschil. Flourishing is the one whose rebellion is released, whose shortcoming is covered.The Hebrew form נְשׂוּי (nesui, lifted or borne) in Psalm 32:1 comes from נשא (nasa, lift, carry, bear), the root behind “forgive” here. The parallel makes the image clear: transgression is something lifted, not a permanent identity.
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