What Does Exodus 9:21 Mean?
And he who did not set his heart to the word of the LORD left his servants and his cattle in the field.
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 he that regarded not the word of the LORD left his servants and his cattle in the field.THE KEY
“Regarded not” is literally “did not set his heart toward” the LORD’s word, and the field is where that inward refusal becomes visible.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now where the word is not held in the heart: what rests in a reader’s care can remain exposed. It places the inward posture beside its concrete consequence, servants and cattle left in the field.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that disregarding a word is only an inward choice: here, the disregard is tied to vulnerable lives left exposed.
THE ROOT
שָׂם לִבּוֹ אֶל
śām libbô ʾel
GROWS FROM
שׂים
ś-y-m
to put, place, set
“did not set his heart to” in this verse is śām libbô ʾel. The Hebrew pictures regard as placing the heart toward the word, not merely noticing it. The verse makes that inner orientation visible in what is brought under shelter, and what is left outside.
ALSO GROWS
śām: set, placed
שָׂם
This is the verb beneath “regarded”: the heart is placed toward the word.
yāśîm: he will set, put
יָשִׂים
The same root can describe deliberate placement, sharpening the sense of an oriented heart.
וַיַּעֲזֹב
wayyaʿăzōv
GROWS FROM
עזב
ʿ-z-b
to leave, forsake, abandon
The verb carries the force of forsaking, so “left” here is more than a location: the servants and cattle are abandoned in the field. That choice gives the verse’s inward disregard an exposed, tangible result.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāzav: leave, forsake
עָזַב
This is the root verb in the verse, naming what happens to the servants and cattle.
ʿāzûv: forsaken, deserted
עָזוּב
This related form describes the condition of what has been left behind.
דְּבַר
dəvar
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
to speak; as a noun, a word or matter
The Hebrew word can refer both to speech and to a matter or thing. The LORD’s word is therefore held alongside the concrete matter in the field: the speech has a bearing on what happens to those lives.
ALSO GROWS
dibbēr: spoke
דִּבֵּר
The verbal branch keeps the word connected to speech that is heard.
dābār: word, matter, thing
דָּבָר
The noun’s range brings the spoken word close to the real situation unfolding in the field.
THE PATTERN
The word received inwardly becomes an embodied response that shapes what is sheltered and what is exposed.
He who stood in awe of the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses.Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house upon the rock.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
He who stood in awe of the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses.The two verses set opposite responses to the LORD’s word side by side: one brings servants and cattle into the houses; the other leaves them in the field. The contrast reveals how an inward response takes shape in what is sheltered.
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