What Does Exodus 10:18 Mean?
And he went out from Pharaoh and softened the LORD.
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 he went out from Pharaoh, and intreated the LORD.THE KEY
The Hebrew root here can name both the plea and, elsewhere, the one who is entreated, joining the asking to the possibility of response.
THE MEANING
Pharaoh is the immediate power in the room, but he is not the horizon of the plea; Moses addresses the LORD. The verse speaks now wherever a crisis seems bounded by the authority controlling its terms: that authority does not own every possible response.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that whoever controls the immediate crisis is the only one with power to answer it.
THE ROOT
וַיֶּעְתַּר
wayyeʿtar
GROWS FROM
עתר
ʿ-t-r
to entreat or supplicate
“softened” in this verse is wayyeʿtar. The root appears in forms for making a plea and for being entreated. Hebrew thus holds the appeal and the response within one word-family, revealing that entreaty reaches toward an answer.
ALSO GROWS
wayyeʿtar: and he entreated
וַיֶּעְתַּר
This active form appears when Isaac pleads with the LORD in Genesis 25:21; it shows the root as a direct appeal.
wayyeʿater: and he was entreated
וַיֵּעָתֵר
Also in Genesis 25:21, this form describes the LORD receiving Isaac’s plea; the same root names the answering side of entreaty.
THE PATTERN
A plea moves beyond the immediate power that can negotiate a crisis and toward the LORD, whose response reaches beyond those terms.
And Moses went out from Pharaoh, and pleaded with the LORD.A Prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the LORD. Hear and respond to my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come to you.Speak your stumbles into the open to one another, and pray over one another, that you may be made whole. The asking of an aligned one, working within, is very strong.THE THREAD
And Isaac pleaded with the LORD for his wife, because she was barren, and the LORD was moved by him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.This verse uses the same root twice: Isaac entreats, and the LORD is entreated. It makes visible the two movements held together in the root behind Moses’ plea.
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