What Does Exodus 33:18 Mean?
And he said, Please, show me your weight.
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 he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.THE KEY
Here “glory” is weight: the request is to encounter the substance of God’s presence, which the next verse names through goodness and the LORD’s name.
THE MEANING
Your desire to perceive God meets a presence with substance: glory carries the weight of who God is. The next verse unfolds that disclosure as goodness passing before the seeker and the LORD’s name proclaimed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that God’s glory is only visual brilliance or power without character; the following line binds it to goodness and the proclaimed name.
THE ROOT
כְּבֹדֶךָ
kevodekha
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy; to carry weight.
The request is for God’s kavod, weight, also the source of words for honor: what has weight commands regard. The next verse discloses that weight as goodness and the proclaimed name, so the word holds more than visible brightness: it points to God’s substantial presence and character.
ALSO GROWS
kāvēd: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
This is the root’s concrete sense, revealing the physical image beneath “glory”: something with weight and substance.
kibbēd: To honor or treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
The shared root links weight with honor: God’s glory carries a presence worthy of regard.
THE PATTERN
God’s glory carries the weight of God’s presence, disclosed through what fills and reveals.
And the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the weight of the LORD filled the dwelling.To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens recount the weight of God; and the expanse sets forth the work of his hands.And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.THE THREAD
To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens recount the weight of God; and the expanse sets forth the work of his hands.Moses asks to see the LORD’s kavod; the psalm names the heavens as declaring that same glory. The shared word widens the request: God’s weight is disclosed in the created expanse as well as in direct encounter.
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