What Does Exodus 13:1 Mean?
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
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 the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,THE KEY
The verse names its listener before it reveals the message: the one called “drawn out” is met by speech whose Hebrew root also names the word or matter spoken.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s speech reaches you before its content is disclosed; the verse lets the act of address stand in the open. It places you beside Moses, the one named “drawn out,” at the threshold of what is about to be said.
THE ROOT
וַיְדַבֵּר
vayedabber
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; this word family also carries the sense of a word or matter.
“spake” in this verse is vayedabber. The verb for speaking shares its root with davar, “word,” which can also mean a matter or thing. English separates speech from what is spoken; Hebrew holds them in one word family.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word; also matter or thing.
דָּבָר
The spoken address belongs to the same root family as the word or matter it carries.
dibbur: Speech or utterance.
דִּבּוּר
This noun makes the shared root visible in another form: speech grows from the same seed as davar, “word.”
מֹשֶׁה
Mosheh
GROWS FROM
משׁה
To draw out.
Exodus 2:10 ties Moses’s name to being drawn out of the water. Here the address reaches the one whose name carries that nature before the next instruction is revealed.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: To draw out.
מָשָׁה
This verb supplies the root associated with Moses’s name.
meshithihu: I drew him out.
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This is the form used in Exodus 2:10 to explain the name, linking Moses with the act of being drawn out.
THE PATTERN
Divine speech addresses a person and opens a response.
And the LORD said to Abram, Go away from your land, from your land of birth, and from your father's house, to the land I will let you see.For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you will hear and respond to his voice.My sheep hear and respond to my voice, and I perceive them, and they follow me.THE THREAD
And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses, the one drawn out, and she said, Because from the waters I drew him out.Exodus 2:10 ties the name Moses to מָשָׁה (mashah), “to draw out,” through the words “I drew him out.” So when Exodus 13:1 addresses Moses by name, it calls the one marked by being drawn out before the next words are spoken.
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