What Does Exodus 17:14 Mean?
And the LORD said to Moses, Write this as a memorial in a scroll, and set it into the ears of Joshua. For I will surely wipe out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens.
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 said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua: for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven.THE KEY
The same Hebrew root names the memorial that must endure and Amalek’s remembrance that will be erased, preserving the vow of forgetting inside the record itself.
THE MEANING
You stand between two acts of memory: this account is written and placed in Joshua’s hearing, while Amalek’s remembrance is promised total erasure. The preserved record does not soften the violence; it carries the vow of extinction forward.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A record always preserves its subject: here the memorial endures while Amalek’s remembrance is vowed for erasure.
THE ROOT
זִכָּרוֹן
zikkaron
GROWS FROM
זכר
z-k-r
Remember, call to mind, mention.
English gives “memorial” and “remembrance” separate jobs, but both grow from זכר (z-k-r, remember or mention). The account is preserved as written remembrance and spoken mention, even as the verse names a people for erasure.
ALSO GROWS
zakar: To remember, call to mind, or mention.
זָכַר
The root verb shows that a memorial keeps something present by recalling and naming it.
mazkir: One who brings something to mind; a recorder.
מַזְכִּיר
This branch links remembrance with the act of keeping an account, echoing the command to write and rehearse it.
מֹשֶׁה
Moshe
GROWS FROM
משה
m-sh-h
Draw out, especially from water.
“Moses” in this verse is Moshe. Moshe’s name carries “drawn out,” from the verb used when he is drawn from the water. The one named for being drawn out now draws this event into durable written and spoken remembrance.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: To draw out, especially from water.
מָשָׁה
This verb is the source of the name Moses and supplies the nature carried by the name in this verse.
meshitihu: “I drew him out,” the phrase associated with Moses’s naming in Exodus 2:10.
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This form makes “drawn out” an identity carried by Moses as he receives the charge to carry the account onward.
THE PATTERN
A command endures when it is fixed as a memorial and carried forward through repeated telling.
And this day will be for you a remembrance. You will keep it as a feast to the LORD throughout your generations, a statute for the ages.So that the generation that follows might know them, the children yet to be born, who will rise and recount them to their children.And he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.THE THREAD
And it shall be, when the LORD your God gives you rest from all your enemies around you, in the land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance to take hold of, that you shall wipe out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens; you shall not forget.This verse repeats the command to blot out Amalek’s remembrance, then adds, “thou shalt not forget it.” The shared זכר (z-k-r, remember or mention) root links that remembrance to Exodus’s memorial, while the final clause makes the record of erasure something that must remain in memory.
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