What Does Exodus 5:15 Mean?
Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried out to Pharaoh, saying, Why have you done this to your servants?
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
Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?THE KEY
The word translated “servants” also names work and labor, so their cry exposes how power has turned service into a burden.
THE MEANING
The verse brings you to the moment a grievance is spoken straight to power: “Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?” The word for “servants” also carries the sense of work and service, naming these people through the labor being demanded of them. Their assigned role does not erase their voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that being someone’s servant means you have no right to question how you are treated dissolves here: they speak their grievance directly to the ruler.
THE ROOT
וַיִּצְעֲקוּ
vayits'aqu
GROWS FROM
צעק
To cry out or raise an outcry.
English “cried” can sound like an inward emotion, but צעק is an outcry made audible. The same root names both the act of crying out and the outcry itself, carrying the complaint beyond the one who suffers it.
ALSO GROWS
tse'aqah: Outcry; cry for help.
צְעָקָה
This noun appears in the language of cries heard amid oppression, showing that the spoken complaint is itself part of the verse’s meaning.
tso'eq: One who is crying out.
צוֹעֵק
This form names the person by the act of raising the cry, bringing the speaker and the outcry into one picture.
לַעֲבָדֶיךָ
la'avadekha
GROWS FROM
עבד
To work or serve.
The root joins the person who serves to the work or service itself. Here, the word for “servants” carries the labor beneath the complaint: the people ask why they are being treated this way while their service is being demanded.
ALSO GROWS
eved: Servant; enslaved person.
עֶבֶד
This noun names a person in service, as the officers describe themselves when confronting Pharaoh.
avodah: Work; service; labor.
עֲבֹדָה
This branch names the activity carried by the servant, linking their status to the work at the center of their grievance.
THE PATTERN
A cry from beneath an imposed burden makes the treatment of the burdened audible to those with power to hear.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The same root, צעק (tsa’aq, to cry out), names the plea here and the cry heard in Exodus 3:7. Here the cry is directed to Pharaoh; there, the same outcry under taskmasters is heard by the LORD.
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