What Does Judges 13:17 Mean?
And Manoah said to the messenger of the LORD, What is your name, so that when your word comes, we may give you weight?
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 Manoah said unto the angel of the LORD, What is thy name, that when thy sayings come to pass we may do thee honour?THE KEY
Manoah asks for the messenger’s name because a name carries a nature, and fulfilled words give that nature weight.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment when a promise is still unseen: a name carries the speaker’s nature, and the words become legible when they come to pass. Here, “honour” grows from כבד (kavad, to give weight): fulfilled speech lets the messenger’s nature be recognized as weighty.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A name is only a label, detached from the nature revealed by what is spoken and done.
THE ROOT
וְכִבַּדְנוּךָ
ve-kibbadnukha
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; to treat as weighty.
“give you weight” in this verse is ve-kibbadnukha. Manoah has asked for שֵׁם (shem, name as nature); כבד shows what he anticipates: when the words come to pass, that nature is treated as weighty. “Honour” can sound like a courtesy, but the root pictures recognition as giving weight.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight; honor or glory.
כָּבוֹד
This noun keeps the concrete sense of weight inside the idea of honor, linking recognition to what is considered substantial.
kaved: Heavy; weighty.
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the root’s physical image clear: to honor is to regard someone as carrying weight.
דְּבָרֶיךָ
devarêkha
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak; the related noun can mean a word or a matter.
The Hebrew word family of דָּבָר (davar, word or matter) holds speech and what is spoken about close together. The verse ties the messenger’s name to words that come to pass, not to a detached label.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word; matter or thing.
דָּבָר
The same word can name what is said and the matter being spoken of, deepening the link between the promise and its fulfillment.
dibber: To speak; he spoke.
דִּבֵּר
This verb branch points back to the act of speaking that precedes the sayings coming to pass.
THE PATTERN
A name’s nature becomes visible through the weight of its words and outcomes.
Let not my lord, I beg you, set his heart on this man of worthlessness, Nabal, the withering one. For as his name is, so is he. Nabal is his name, and withering is with him. But I, your handmaid, did not see the young men of my lord, whom you sent.And the LORD passed by before his face, and called out, The LORD, The LORD God, compassionate and full of favor, slow to flare, abounding in faithful love and truth,For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not gather figs from thorns, nor do they gather grapes from a bramble bush.THE THREAD
Give to the LORD the weight of his name; bow down to the LORD in set-apart splendor.The Hebrew word behind “glory,” כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight), shares the כבד root with “honour” here. The verse links a name’s nature with the weight it carries when it is recognized.
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