What Does Exodus 7:14 Mean?
And the LORD said to Moses, Pharaoh's heart is heavy; he refuses to let the people 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 the LORD said unto Moses, Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, he refuseth to let the people go.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls Pharaoh’s heart heavy: the power that refuses to release others is already carrying the weight that keeps them bound.
THE MEANING
Wherever one person’s power holds others in place, refusal to release keeps bondage active. The hinge is shalach: send forth, release, let go.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that the captive alone carries the condition of bondage: the verse exposes the weight in the one who refuses to release.
THE ROOT
כָּבֵד
kaved
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
to be heavy, to carry weight
“is heavy” in this verse is kaved. The Hebrew describes Pharaoh’s heart as heavy, so “hardened” also carries the sense of weight. The same root gives kavod, weight or honor: the refusal is a weight of power that lands on those Pharaoh holds.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: weight; honor or glory
כָּבוֹד
The root keeps the image of weight inside the description of Pharaoh’s heart.
kibbed: to honor, to treat as weighty
כִּבֵּד
The same seed connects weight with what is given significance or authority.
לְשַׁלַּח
ləšallaḥ
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
to send, send forth, release
“let the people go” in this verse is ləšallaḥ. The verb does not only describe stopping a grip; it names a sending forth. Here the people are held at the point where movement into freedom should begin.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: sending away, dismissal
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch makes release a sending out, matching the action Pharaoh withholds.
Shiloach: sent; the name of the waters of Shiloah
שִׁלֹחַ
The same send-forth image appears in water moving outward, something no longer held back.
מֹשֶׁה
Moshe
GROWS FROM
משׁה
m-sh-h
to draw out
The text connects Moses’s name with being drawn out of the waters. Here, that name stands beside the people Pharaoh refuses to send out, carrying the movement of extraction in the scene’s human voice.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: to draw out
מָשָׁה
This is the verb connected to Moses’s name in Exodus 2:10.
meshithihu: I drew him out
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This form appears in the naming explanation, tying Moses to the act of being drawn out.
THE PATTERN
Refusal to release turns power into bondage, while freedom takes shape as the held are sent out.
Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?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.And he called for Moses and Aaron in the night, and said, “Rise up, and go out from among my people, both you and the children of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as you have said.”THE THREAD
Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?The Hebrew verb behind “let the people go” in Exodus 7:14 recurs as “let the oppressed go free” in Isaiah 58:6, beside undoing heavy burdens and breaking yokes. The same root joins refusal to release with the concrete act of unbinding.
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