What Does Exodus 33:6 Mean?
And the children of Israel stripped their ornaments from themselves by Mount Horeb.
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 the children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments by the mount Horeb.THE KEY
The word for stripping off the ornaments belongs to the same root family as rescue: removal can carry the shape of being drawn out.
THE MEANING
Here the reader meets a people taking off their ornaments by Horeb. The Hebrew verb also belongs to a root used for rescue and taking away, so the removal carries a second shade: being drawn out. The adornment is removed; the people remain.
THE ROOT
וַיִּתְנַצְּלוּ
vayyitnatstselu
GROWS FROM
נצל
natsal
To snatch away, remove, strip off, or rescue.
“stripped their ornaments from themselves” in this verse is vayyitnatstselu. This root holds removal and rescue together: one form describes taking ornaments off, while another describes being delivered. The added shade here is extraction, the adornment is taken away, and the people remain.
ALSO GROWS
hitzil: To deliver or rescue.
הִצִּיל
This branch shows the root’s sense of being drawn out of danger alongside its sense of taking something away.
vayenatzlu: They took valuables away; the same root appears in Exodus 12:36.
וַיְנַצְּלוּ
The root names both removing ornaments here and taking goods away there, keeping both actions within a single field of removal.
THE PATTERN
Scripture shows outward adornment being removed or laid down before the LORD.
And when the people heard this evil word, they mourned, and no one set his ornaments upon himself.In that day the Lord will remove the adornment of their jingling anklets, and their nets, and their crescents.The twenty-four older ones fall down before the one who sits upon the throne, and bow down to the one who lives into the ages of the ages, and throw their crowns before the throne, saying,THE THREAD
And when the people heard this evil word, they mourned, and no one set his ornaments upon himself.Both verses use עֲדִי (ʿădî, ornament): here no one puts it on, and in verse 6 they take it off. Together, the lines make the removal a visible expression of the people’s mourning.
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