What Does Exodus 4:17 Mean?
And this staff you will take in your hand, with which you will do the signs.
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 thou shalt take this rod in thine hand, wherewith thou shalt do signs.THE KEY
The rod in Moses’ hand is a מַטֶּה (matteh, staff), the same Hebrew word that also means “tribe,” so one small object carries the language of a whole people.
THE MEANING
A sign takes form through an ordinary object already in hand. The Hebrew word for the rod also names a tribe, letting the instrument echo a whole people.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a sign requires an extraordinary object: here, the staff already in hand becomes its visible means.
THE ROOT
מַטֶּה
matteh
GROWS FROM
נטה
n-t-h
to stretch out, extend, or incline
The verse uses מַטֶּה (matteh, staff or rod), a word linked to נָטָה (natah, stretch out or incline). Hebrew also uses מַטֶּה (matteh, tribe) for a people; the staff that carries the signs therefore echoes the people in the same word.
ALSO GROWS
matteh: staff, rod
מַטֶּה
This is the sense used here: an object held in the hand becomes the means through which the signs appear.
matteh: tribe, a collective people
מַטֶּה
The same word names a people, giving the sign-bearing staff a resonance beyond Moses himself.
THE PATTERN
A sign becomes visible through a tangible change in the world.
And he said, Throw it to the ground. And he threw it to the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses fled from its face.This beginning of signs Jesus made in Cana of Galilee, and he brought his weight into the light, and his disciples leaned their weight on him.And he took him by the right hand and raised him up, and at once his feet and ankles grew firm.THE THREAD
And the LORD said to him, What is that in your hand? And he said, A rod.The same Hebrew word, מַטֶּה (matteh, rod or staff), appears when Moses first names what is in his hand. The command to use it for signs gives that already-held staff a role, while the word’s other sense, tribe, lets it echo the people Moses is sent to address.
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