What Does Jeremiah 32:21 Mean?
And you brought out your people Israel from the land of Egypt with signs and wonders, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, and with great awe.
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 hast brought forth thy people Israel out of the land of Egypt with signs, and with wonders, and with a strong hand, and with a stretched out arm, and with great terror;THE KEY
The Hebrew says God causes the people to emerge from Mitzrayim, the narrow place: their exit begins in a power beyond their own.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you in the narrow place now: what holds you is not the final boundary of your life. Release appears as a forceful bringing out, marked by signs, wonders, a strong hand, an extended arm, and great terror.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that release must be self-produced falls away: the verse places the bringing out in God’s strength and initiative.
THE ROOT
וַתּוֹצֵא
wattotsi
GROWS FROM
יצא
to go out, come out, or emerge
“brought out” in this verse is wattotsi. This is a causative form: God makes the people come out; they are not simply finding an exit. The same root gives words for going out and departure, holding both the movement of release and the people’s emergence together.
ALSO GROWS
yatsa: to go out or come forth
יָצָא
The root verb names the movement that God causes in this verse.
yetsi'ah: departure or going out
יְצִיאָה
This noun makes the exit itself part of the same word family as the act of bringing the people out.
נְטוּיָה
netuyah
GROWS FROM
נטה
to stretch, extend, turn, or incline
“stretched out” in this verse is netuyah. The arm is not merely strong; it is extended. This root also carries the sense of turning or inclining, so the image joins force with direction: power reaches outward.
ALSO GROWS
natah: to stretch out, turn, or incline
נָטָה
The verb names the extending action expressed by the arm in the verse.
netiyyah: an inclination or turning
נְטִיָּה
This related noun shows the root’s movement toward a direction, adding reach to the image of the extended arm.
מוֹרָא
mora
GROWS FROM
ירא
to fear or experience dread; in some contexts, to stand in awe
The word for terror belongs to the ירא family, which can name fear or awe according to its setting. Here, מוֹרָא גָּדוֹל preserves the frightening force named in the verse; the wording does not reduce it to a gentle rescue.
ALSO GROWS
yir'ah: fear, dread, or awe
יִרְאָה
This noun from the same root shows the range carried by the verse’s word for terror.
yare: to fear or stand in awe
יָרֵא
The verb shares the root and makes clear that the terror is part of the verse’s language of fear.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance is shown as a forceful passage out, made visible through signs and an extended hand.
Or has God tried to go and take for himself a nation from the midst of another nation, by trials, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by an outstretched arm, and by great awe, according to all that the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes?And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.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 Moses said to the people, Remember this day, when you came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage. For by a strong hand the LORD brought you out from this place. No risen bread shall be eaten.“Brought forth” in Jeremiah and “came out” here both carry the Hebrew root יצא. One verse names God causing the emergence; the other names the people living that same movement out.
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