What Does Exodus 3:20 Mean?
And I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my wonders, which I will do in its midst, and after that he will let you go.
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 I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.THE KEY
The same שָׁלַח root names both the hand God sends out and the release Egypt is forced to give.
THE MEANING
This verse makes release tangible as something sent into what holds you: the hand reaches out, Egypt is struck by wonders, and those held are let go. The sequence does not soften its violence; the force holding the people is met with force.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The power holding you does not have the final say over your release.
THE ROOT
וְשָׁלַחְתִּי
ve-shalachti
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send, send forth, release, let go.
“stretch out my hand” in this verse is ve-shalachti. English gives the same verb two different faces: the hand is “stretched out,” while Pharaoh “lets go.” Hebrew uses שָׁלַח for both, sending forth is the force that reaches into the grip and the motion that finally opens it. In this verse, release follows a direct strike, so the word’s freedom carries the passage’s violence with it.
ALSO GROWS
yeshallach: He will send forth; he will let go.
יְשַׁלַּח
This is the same root later in the verse: the movement that sends the hand out also names Egypt’s release of the people.
shilluach: Sending away, dismissal, release.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch shows that letting go can mean sending someone onward, not merely ceasing to hold them.
נִפְלְאֹתַי
nifla'otai
GROWS FROM
פלא
Be extraordinary or marvelous, beyond ordinary understanding.
The verse calls the acts against Egypt “wonders”: they are not decorative marvels but interventions beyond what Egypt can contain or explain. The confrontation itself becomes a disclosure, as power is exposed through what exceeds Egypt’s control.
ALSO GROWS
pele: Wonder, marvel.
פֶּלֶא
This noun carries the root’s sense of an act that exceeds the ordinary, illuminating the force of the wonders named here.
nifla: Wonderful, extraordinary.
נִפְלָא
The same root describes what stands beyond ordinary expectation, the quality these acts bear in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Confinement is broken through a decisive act of deliverance, and those held are brought out.
Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the loads of the Egyptians, and I will snatch you from their service, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments.He brings them out of darkness and the valley of deepest darkness, and tears their bonds apart.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
Now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.In Exodus 3:10, “I will send thee” uses the same שָׁלַח root that later names the hand sent against Egypt and Pharaoh sending the people out. The root makes this a chain of sending: messenger, confronting hand, release.
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