What Does Exodus 20:1 Mean?
And God spoke all these words, 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 God spake all these words, saying,THE KEY
The same Hebrew root means both “to speak” and “a matter,” joining God’s utterance to the substance it names.
THE MEANING
God’s speech addresses you in the present: these words are not detached sounds but matters with substance. What the verse names as spoken reaches the life you are living now, where its meaning is still unfolding.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that these words are only remote text; the verse presents them as speech that bears substance and addresses you now.
THE ROOT
דְּבָרִים
devarim
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak; as a noun, a word, matter, or thing.
The Hebrew verb for “spake” and the noun for “words” share this root. The word for what is spoken can also mean the matter or thing at hand, so God’s speech here carries substance, not sound alone.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word, matter, affair, or thing.
דָּבָר
The same noun names both a spoken word and the matter it concerns, joining utterance with substance.
dibber: Spoke or declared; a verbal form of the root דבר.
דִּבֵּר
This is the root’s speaking form, sharing its seed with דְּבָרִים (devarim), “words,” in the verse.
THE PATTERN
God’s spoken word carries substance: it opens creation, sustains life, and reaches the heart.
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.And he bent you low, and made you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you had never perceived, nor had your fathers, so that he might make you perceive that humankind does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes out from the mouth of the LORD does humankind live.For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.THE THREAD
These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly on the mountain, out of the midst of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick darkness, with a great voice, and he added nothing more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone, and gave them to me.The Hebrew again uses the same root for “spake” and “words,” making their shared seed audible where English gives two forms. It presents the words as spoken directly to the assembly before they are written down.
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