What Does Exodus 20:24 Mean?
You shall make an altar of soil for me, and upon it you shall slaughter your rising offerings and your wholeness offerings, your sheep and your herd. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you, and I will bless you.
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
An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee.THE KEY
The altar and the sacrifice share a root, the offering is named for wholeness, and where God’s nature is remembered, God comes near to bless.
THE MEANING
Earth itself becomes the meeting place: the altar is made from ground, and the offering carries the sense of wholeness. When God’s name, God’s nature, is brought to remembrance, God comes near and blesses you. Presence is joined to tangible life: soil, animals, offering, and provision.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
God can be encountered only in one fixed sanctuary, apart from ordinary material life. Here, the promise of presence reaches every place where God’s name is made known.
THE ROOT
מִזְבֵּחַ
mizbeach
GROWS FROM
זבח
z-b-ḥ
Slaughter, sacrifice.
The same seed gives both the altar and the verb for sacrificing, so the altar is not a detached sacred object: its name identifies it as the place of sacrifice. English separates object and action, while Hebrew names their connection.
ALSO GROWS
zevach: Sacrifice, sacrificial offering.
זֶבַח
This is the act and offering carried out at the altar named from the same root.
mizbeach: Altar, the place of sacrifice.
מִזְבֵּחַ
The altar’s name holds the act of sacrifice inside it.
שְׁלָמִים
shelamim
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
sh-l-m
Be whole, sound, complete; bring to completion.
“wholeness offerings” in this verse is shelamim. The English label “peace” can foreground calm; this word’s family also carries wholeness and completeness. The offering’s own name places wholeness inside the act of approach, alongside the promise that God comes near and blesses.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
It shows the wider sense carried by the offering’s root.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
It makes the offering’s connection to completeness explicit.
אַזְכִּיר אֶת־שְׁמִי
azkir et-shemi
GROWS FROM
זכר
z-k-r
Remember, call to mind, mention.
“cause my name to be remembered” in this verse is azkir et-shemi. The verb rendered “record” means to cause remembrance or to mention. With name, שֵׁם (shem; name as nature or character), the promise attaches divine presence to the nature brought to mind, not merely to letters written down.
ALSO GROWS
zeker: Remembrance, mention.
זֵכֶר
It shows how the verse’s “record” belongs to the language of recalling or naming.
zikkaron: Memorial, remembrance.
זִכָּרוֹן
It carries remembrance into something that makes a name present across time.
THE PATTERN
Where God’s name is established, a place becomes a meeting point for presence, prayer, and response.
And he pulled up from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and stretched out his tent, with Bethel to the west and Hai to the east. And there he built an altar to the LORD, and called upon the nature of the LORD.That your eyes may be open toward this house night and day, toward the place of which you have said, My name shall be there, so that you may hear and respond to the prayer which your servant makes toward this place.For where two or three are gathered together in my nature, there I am in the midst of them.THE THREAD
Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD, and called it Jehovahshalom, the LORD is wholeness. To this day it is still in Ophrah of the Abiezrites.Exodus names the offering שְׁלָמִים (shelamim; wholeness offerings), from the root שׁלם (sh-l-m). Gideon’s altar bears the name Jehovah-shalom (יְהוָה שָׁלוֹם, YHWH-shalom; the LORD is wholeness), carrying that same root into a divine name: wholeness is bound to the presence encountered at the altar.
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