What Does Exodus 12:32 Mean?
“Take also your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and go away; and bless me also.”
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
Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also.THE KEY
Pharaoh can command their departure, but he has to ask the very people he held for a blessing he cannot command.
THE MEANING
The flocks and herds leave with the people, and Pharaoh asks those he is sending away to bless him too. The command can direct their departure, but it cannot produce their blessing; that remains something he must ask them to give. The request reveals a limit to power even as it exercises power.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Authority can direct where another person goes, but it cannot compel the blessing that person gives.
THE ROOT
וּבֵרַכְתֶּם
u-verakhtem
GROWS FROM
ברך
barakh
To bless; the root is associated with בֶּרֶךְ (berekh), knee, carrying the image of bending the knee.
The request to bless carries the image of a bent knee beside Pharaoh’s command to depart. He can order the people away, yet asks those he has held to offer him something he cannot order: a blessing.
ALSO GROWS
berekh: Knee
בֶּרֶךְ
The shared root brings a bodily posture into the idea of blessing: a knee bends, and a blessing is given rather than seized.
berakhah: Blessing
בְּרָכָה
This is the blessing Pharaoh asks the departing people to speak over him.
THE PATTERN
Blessing can cross the boundary between a person and those who oppose or harm them.
And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the ground will be blessed.Bless those who curse you, and pray for those who abuse you.Bless those who pursue you. Bless, and do not curse.THE THREAD
Whom the LORD of hosts will bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance.In Exodus, Pharaoh in Egypt asks the departing people for blessing; Isaiah uses the same root ברך (barakh, bless) when the LORD blesses Egypt and calls it “my people.” The root carries the request further: Egypt itself stands within the reach of blessing.
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