What Does Exodus 7:4 Mean?
But Pharaoh shall not hear and respond to you, that I may set my hand upon Egypt, and bring out my armies, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.
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
But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.THE KEY
Pharaoh can refuse to hear the demand, but he cannot stop the people from being brought out.
THE MEANING
A voice that refuses release does not hold the final power over those it confines. God’s hand judges Egypt’s grip and brings the people out of the narrow place.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a captor’s refusal gives him the final say over whether the people can leave.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁמַע
yishma
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, heed, and respond.
“shall not hear and respond” in this verse is yishma. Pharaoh’s refusal is more than sound failing to reach his ears: he will not give the response the demand calls for. The Hebrew root joins hearing with answering, so the conflict is over whether the call for release is met.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
It shows that hearing can hold both receiving a call and answering it.
shemuah: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
The word carries the received message itself; Pharaoh’s refusal concerns his response to it.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind, press in, or confine; the related word צַר (tsar) means narrow or constricting.
Mitzrayim carries the image of the two narrows: constriction made into a place. The verse’s movement out of Egypt is also an emergence from what presses life in.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow or constricted.
צַר
It gives the name’s image of a place where movement and life are pressed in.
tsarah: Distress or trouble.
צָרָה
It shows constriction as an inner trouble as well as a place.
Mitzrayim: Egypt, read as the two narrows.
מִצְרַיִם
The people are brought out from the place whose name carries constriction.
וְהוֹצֵאתִי
wehōṣēʾtî
GROWS FROM
יצא
To go out or emerge; in this form, to bring out.
“bring forth” in this verse is wehōṣēʾtî. The root’s basic motion is going out, while the form here makes God the one who brings the people out. Deliverance is pictured as an actual passage from confinement into open space.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: To go out or emerge.
יָצָא
The root makes departure the central movement of the verse.
yetsi’ah: Going out or departure.
יְצִיאָה
The noun names the same motion that becomes the people’s release from Egypt.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance brings people out of constriction and judges the power that holds them there.
For I will cross through the land of Egypt this night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the LORD.And he brought out his people with leaping, and his chosen with a ringing cry.This one brought them out, having made wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, and in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.THE THREAD
And Pharaoh said, Who is the LORD, that I should hear and respond to his voice to let Israel go? I have never known the LORD, and I will not let Israel go.Pharaoh’s question about whether he should obey the LORD’s voice uses the same שמע root as “hearken.” Exodus 7:4 names that refusal to hear and shows that it cannot stop the people from going out.
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