What Does Exodus 23:30 Mean?
By small measures I will drive them out from before you, until you are fruitful and take hold of the land.
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
By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased, and inherit the land.THE KEY
The Hebrew ties inheritance to becoming fruitful, even as the verse names the inhabitants driven out to make that inheritance possible.
THE MEANING
The sentence holds two actions together: those before you are driven from the land in stages, and your increase reaches the point where you inherit it. It does not present the land as empty; their expulsion is the stated cost of your possession.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that this inheritance is harmless or cost-free: it explicitly binds possession to the expulsion of people already on the land.
THE ROOT
תִּפְרֶה
tifreh
GROWS FROM
פרה
pārāh: to bear fruit, become fruitful; by extension, to increase.
The verb translated “increased” is literally about becoming fruitful. The verse makes that fruitfulness the threshold for inheriting the land, linking growth to the measure of possession.
ALSO GROWS
pārāh: To bear fruit; to be fruitful.
פָּרָה
This basic verb shows the living growth contained in “be increased.”
hip̄rāh: To make fruitful; to cause to increase.
הִפְרָה
This causative form keeps increase rooted in fruitfulness, the same image behind the verse’s condition.
וְנָחַלְתָּ
ve-naḥalta
GROWS FROM
נחל
nāḥal: to inherit or take possession as an allotted holding.
“take hold of” in this verse is ve-naḥalta. This root makes “inherit” concrete: what is received is a holding, here the land itself. The sentence places that possession beside the expulsion of those already there.
ALSO GROWS
naḥălāh: Inheritance; an allotted possession.
נַחֲלָה
This noun names the kind of holding the verb describes receiving.
hinḥîl: To cause someone to inherit; to assign as an inheritance.
הִנְחִיל
This causative form shows the root’s movement from allotting a holding to someone receiving it.
אֲגָרְשֶׁנּוּ
ʾăgāršennû
GROWS FROM
גרש
gāraš: to expel, drive away, banish.
“drive them out” in this verse is ʾăgāršennû. The verb is forceful: those already before you are expelled. A related form for divorce shares this root, preserving the image of separation by sending away.
ALSO GROWS
legāreš: To drive away; to expel.
לְגָרֵשׁ
This infinitive retains the direct force of the action in the verse.
gērûšîn: Divorce; dismissal from a marriage.
גֵּרוּשִׁין
This related noun expresses separation through the act of sending away.
THE PATTERN
What is to be occupied or brought to completion unfolds in stages rather than all at once.
I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest the land be emptied, and the beasts of the field multiply against you.The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little. You cannot finish them at once, lest the beasts of the field multiply against you.The soil bears fruit by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.THE THREAD
The LORD your God will drive out those nations before you little by little. You cannot finish them at once, lest the beasts of the field multiply against you.Deuteronomy repeats “by little and little” and states why the removal is not immediate: the land cannot be cleared all at once without creating another danger. This makes the pace of possession explicit while leaving the displacement fully visible.
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