What Does Exodus 15:17 Mean?
You shall bring them in and plant them in the mountain of your portion, the footing for you to settle in, which you made, O LORD; the set-apart place, O Lord, which your hands have established.
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
Thou shalt bring them in, and plant them in the mountain of thine inheritance, in the place, O LORD, which thou hast made for thee to dwell in, in the Sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have established.THE KEY
The Hebrew words for “place” and “established” share one root, so this dwelling is already a stable belonging, not merely a destination.
THE MEANING
You are brought toward a place where you take root, and the dwelling is made firm by God’s hands. The inheritance is not only something received; it is a settled place of presence. The sanctuary is where being brought in becomes being at home.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that you are only passing through and have no lasting place: here, you are planted in a dwelling established by God’s hands.
THE ROOT
מָכוֹן
māḵôn
GROWS FROM
כון
Be firm or established; establish.
“footing” in this verse is māḵôn. The noun מָכוֹן (māḵôn, “dwelling-place”) and the verb כּוֹנְנוּ (kōnənû, “they established”) share the root כון (kûn, “be firm, establish”). The dwelling is not just a destination: its stability is part of the same act named when the hands establish it.
ALSO GROWS
māḵôn: A settled place or dwelling.
מָכוֹן
This is the verse’s place for dwelling, carrying the sense of a fixed, established place.
kōnənû: They made firm or established.
כּוֹנְנוּ
The verse uses the same root for what God’s hands do, joining the dwelling to its establishment.
וְתִטָּעֵמוֹ
wətittaʿēmō
GROWS FROM
נטע
Plant; set into the soil.
“plant them” in this verse is wətittaʿēmō. The people are pictured as a planting, deliberately set in a place where they can take root. Isaiah 60:21 uses מַטָּעַי (maṭṭāʿay, “my planting”) for a people who are the work of God’s hands, extending this image of cultivated belonging.
ALSO GROWS
nāṭaʿ: To plant or set into soil.
נָטַע
The verb gives the people’s arrival the character of being rooted in a place.
maṭṭāʿ: A planting or planted place.
מַטָּע
This noun carries the same root image into Isaiah’s description of a people as God’s planting.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance reaches its fullness when a people are planted in a prepared dwelling where God is present.
Those planted in the house of the LORD bloom in the courts of our God.In my Father's house are many places to remain. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to make ready a place for you.And I hear a great voice from the throne, saying, Look, the tent of God is with humankind, and he will pitch his tent among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.THE THREAD
And your people shall all be aligned; they shall take hold of the land for the ages, the shoot of my planting, the work of my hands, that I might be adorned.Isaiah uses מַטָּעַי (maṭṭāʿay, “my planting”), from נטע (nāṭaʿ, “plant”), the same root as “plant them” here. Exodus says the people are planted in the inheritance; Isaiah calls the people themselves the planting of God’s hands.
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