What Does Exodus 3:16 Mean?
Go, gather the elders of Israel, and say to them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared to me, saying, I have surely visited you, and have seen what is done to you in Egypt.
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
Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt:THE KEY
The doubled verb for “visiting” reaches both you and what is being done to you in the narrow place.
THE MEANING
God’s attention reaches you inside the place that constricts your life, and includes what is being done to you there. Your condition is within that attention now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that your suffering goes unseen is undone: the verse names both you and what is done to you as the focus of divine attention.
THE ROOT
פָּקֹד פָּקַדְתִּי
paqod paqadti
GROWS FROM
פקד
paqad
attend to, take account of
“visited” in this verse is paqod paqadti. The repeated form intensifies the attention: “I have surely attended to you.” The wording extends that attention to both the people and what has been done to them, so this visit carries active regard, not merely arrival.
ALSO GROWS
pequddah: oversight, charge, appointment
פְּקֻדָּה
The branch carries the sense of someone or something being placed under active notice.
paqīd: overseer, officer
פָּקִיד
The root can name one who attends to a charge, illuminating the attentiveness inside “visited.”
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צרר
tsarar
bind, press in, constrict
“Egypt” in this verse is Mitzrayim. The name carries the image of the two narrows in its dual ending. Here it names the constricted place where the people are pressed, and the divine attention reaches into that very narrowing.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: narrow, constricted
צַר
The root gives the setting its shape: a place where life is pressed into narrowness.
tsarah: distress, trouble
צָרָה
The narrowed state becomes distress, echoing what is being done to the people.
יִצְחָק
Yitzchak
GROWS FROM
צחק
tzachak
to laugh; the name means “he laughs”
Isaac’s name carries laughter inside the lineage named here. Laughter is embedded in the very names through which the verse identifies God.
ALSO GROWS
tzachak: laugh
צָחַק
This verb is the seed of Isaac’s name, carrying the action of laughter into the family name-list.
tsechoq: laughter
צְחוֹק
The noun makes explicit the quality carried in Isaac’s name.
THE PATTERN
A movement out of constriction begins when suffering and what is done to the sufferer are fully attended to.
The eyes of the LORD are upon the aligned, and his ears are open to their cry.When Jesus saw her, he called her to him and said to her, "Woman, you have been unbound from your weakness."THE THREAD
And the people leaned their weight on it, and they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel, and that he had seen their bending low. Then they bent their heads and bowed down.The same root, פקד (paqad), meaning “attend to, take account of,” appears again in “had visited.” The message in this verse becomes recognized as attention that has reached the people’s affliction.
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