What Does Exodus 16:27 Mean?
And it came to pass, that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, and they found none.
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 it came to pass, that there went out some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found none.THE KEY
A hand can repeat the act of receiving and still find that provision is not seized on demand.
THE MEANING
When you reach for provision beyond the rhythm that holds it, effort cannot create what is absent. The people go out to gather on the seventh day and find nothing; their empty hands make the boundary visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that one more round of effort can always produce what is needed dissolves here: the people gather, yet find none.
THE ROOT
לִלְקֹט
lilqot
GROWS FROM
לקט
l-q-t
to pick up, gather, or glean
“gather” in this verse is lilqot. The word for gathering manna shares its root with the word for gleanings, food left in a field to be picked up. Here the familiar act of gathering meets a day when there is nothing to collect, making the limit visible in the root itself.
ALSO GROWS
leqet: gleanings, what remains to be gathered after a harvest
לֶקֶט
This branch shows gathering as receiving what a field yields; in this verse, the people reach out to gather and find no yield.
liqtu: gather! a plural command to collect
לִקְטוּ
The same root appears in the manna instruction, where the people are told to gather a daily portion; here, repeating that act on the seventh day brings back nothing.
THE PATTERN
Provision has a rhythm and boundary that human effort cannot extend.
Six days you shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is the sabbath, there shall be none in it.It is emptiness for you to rise up early and sit up late, to eat the bread of pains; for so he gives his beloved sleep.Look at the birds of the air, for they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into storehouses; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they?THE THREAD
And Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and gather ears of grain after him in whose eyes I shall find favor. And she said to her, Go, my daughter.Ruth’s “glean” comes from the same Hebrew root, לקט, as “gather” in Exodus. In Ruth, the field yields something to collect; here, the same reaching meets a day with no manna, and the shared root makes that difference plain.
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