What Does Exodus 15:5 Mean?
The deeps have covered them; they went down into the depths as a stone.
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
The depths have covered them: they sank into the bottom as a stone.THE KEY
The sea does not merely hide them; it covers them and carries them down, until the depths become both covering and grave.
THE MEANING
The image is brutally physical: the depths cover them, and they descend like stone to the bottom. It speaks now to the force of being overwhelmed and carried out of sight by something deeper and stronger. Here, covering does not leave what it catches untouched; it encloses and draws downward.
THE ROOT
יָרְדוּ
yāredû
GROWS FROM
ירד
to go down; to descend
The verse uses ירד (y-r-d), “to descend,” for the movement rendered “sank.” The related יְרִידָה (yeridah, “descent”) and יַרְדֵּן (Yarden, “Jordan,” a name commonly linked to descending) show the root’s downward motion in both an action and a waterway.
ALSO GROWS
yeridah: descent; going down
יְרִידָה
This noun retains the same downward movement, which the verse carries all the way to the seabed.
Yarden: Jordan, a name commonly linked to “the descender”
יַרְדֵּן
The river name is commonly connected to ירד, bringing the root’s downward motion into the landscape of water.
יְכַסְיֻמוּ
yekhasyumu
GROWS FROM
כסה
to cover; to conceal or cover over
“covered” in this verse is yekhasyumu. יְכַסְיֻמוּ (yekhasyumu) comes from כסה (kasah), “to cover.” The same root appears in מִכְסֶה (mikhseh, “a covering”), joining the act of covering to the thing that encloses.
ALSO GROWS
kasah: to cover; to conceal
כָּסָה
This is the verb’s root form, showing the action beneath “covered.”
mikhseh: a covering
מִכְסֶה
The related noun names what the sea becomes in the verse: a covering over those it catches.
THE PATTERN
The deep makes overwhelming force visible as water that closes over a body and pulls it down.
For you threw me down into the depths, into the heart of the seas, and the rivers turned around me; all your breakers and your rolling waves crossed over me.I sink in the mire of waters, where there is no footing. I come into the depths of waters, and the flood sweeps over me.But whoever causes one of these little ones who lean their weight into me to stumble, it is better for him that a donkey's millstone be hung about his neck, and that he be sunk down into the deep of the sea.THE THREAD
Those who go down to the sea in ships, who do their work in great waters.The same Hebrew root ירד (y-r-d, “descend”) appears in יֹרְדֵי (yordei, “those who go down”): here bodies descend beneath the sea, while Psalm 107 describes sailors going down to sea in ships. One root holds the downward movement; the surrounding words make it a fatal sinking here and a voyage there.
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