What Does Exodus 12:5 Mean?
Your lamb will be whole, a male of its first year. You will take it from the sheep or from the goats.
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
Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:THE KEY
The lamb’s required soundness carries the deeper sense of being whole and complete.
THE MEANING
The verse sets before you a clearly defined offering: a young male, whole, taken from among the sheep or goats. Its wholeness is part of what makes it fit to be given. Here, deliverance is joined to completeness.
THE ROOT
תָּמִים
tamim
GROWS FROM
ת-מ-ם
t-m-m
To be complete, whole, or sound.
“whole” in this verse is tamim. The word translated “without blemish” also carries the sense of being complete and sound. The offering is not only free of visible defect; its wholeness is part of the word itself.
ALSO GROWS
tamam: To be complete or finished.
תָּמַם
This verb shows the root’s movement toward completion, deepening the sense of an offering presented whole.
tummāh: Integrity or completeness.
תֻּמָּה
This branch carries the same root sense into integrity, connecting the lamb’s soundness with wholeness as a quality.
THE PATTERN
What is given in the pattern of deliverance is specified as whole and free of defect.
And whoever brings near a wholeness offering to the LORD to set apart his vow, or a willing offering from the herd or the sheep, it shall be whole to be pleasing; no blemish shall be in it.When you bring near the blind for slaughter, is it not evil? And when you bring near the lame and the sick, is it not evil? Bring it near now to your governor. Will he be pleased with you, or lift your face? says the LORD of hosts.but with the costly blood of the Anointed One, as of a lamb without blemish and without stain.THE THREAD
And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said to him, I am God Almighty; walk before my face, and be whole.“Without blemish” in this verse and “perfect” in Genesis 17:1 render the Hebrew word תָּמִים (tamim), meaning whole or complete. The shared word links the lamb’s soundness with the wholeness named in the call to walk before God.
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