What Does Deuteronomy 1:2 Mean in the King James?
(There are eleven days’ journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadesh-barnea.)
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The road is eleven days long; the journey can fill forty years.
THE MEANING
The route from Horeb to Kadesh-barnea is measured as eleven days by way of Mount Seir. The Hebrew word for “way” carries the sense of a path made by treading, so the route is ground being crossed. Beside the fortieth-year marker in the next verse, this short distance sits alongside a far longer passage.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
An eleven-day road guarantees an eleven-day passage.
THE ROOT
דֶּרֶךְ
derek
GROWS FROM
דרך
D-R-K
To tread, step, or march.
The “way” is named from the act of treading: it is a path made by movement. English can make “way” sound like an abstract line between places, while this Hebrew word holds the ground beneath each step.
ALSO GROWS
dārakh: To tread, step, or march.
דָּרַךְ
This verb makes the movement inside “way” audible: the route is what feet tread.
midrakh: A tread or footing.
מִדְרָךְ
This related form keeps the root close to the mark left underfoot, illuminating the verse’s route as ground actually crossed.
THE PATTERN
A route’s measured length does not tell how long its passage will take.
And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:After the number of the days in which ye searched the land, even forty days, each day for a year, shall ye bear your iniquities, even forty years, and ye shall know my breach of promise.And the space in which we came from Kadesh-barnea, until we were come over the brook Zered, was thirty and eight years; until all the generation of the men of war were wasted out from among the host, as the LORD sware unto them.THE THREAD
And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:“Way” translates the same Hebrew word, derek, in both verses. Exodus names a route that is near but not taken; here, the eleven-day measure names the path itself, while the surrounding verses show that distance alone cannot measure the passage.
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