What Does Deuteronomy 29:16 Mean in the King James?
(For ye know how we have dwelt in the land of Egypt; and how we came through the nations which ye passed by;
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 same Hebrew root says both “we came through” and “you passed by,” making the crossing itself the shared knowledge.
THE MEANING
Your knowing carries the constricted place you inhabited and the crossings through which you moved among other peoples. The same crossing word holds “we” and “you” together, so this remembered passage belongs to a shared story that still shapes what you perceive now.
THE ROOT
עָבַרְנוּ
ʿavarnu
GROWS FROM
ע־ב־ר
ʿ-b-r
To cross over, pass across, or pass through.
“came through / passed by” in this verse is ʿavarnu. English gives the two forms different shades, but the Hebrew repeats the same crossing root for “we” and “you.” The shared verb makes the passage itself a kind of shared knowing.
ALSO GROWS
ʿever: Beyond, across.
עֵבֶר
The word holds the far side within the idea of crossing.
maʿavar: A crossing, passage.
מַעֲבָר
The same root names both the act of passing through and the passage it creates.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צ־ר־ר
ṣ-r-r
To bind, press in, or confine; the related צַר (tsar) means narrow.
“Egypt” in this verse is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim carries the sound of tzar, “narrow,” in a dual form, the two narrows. The verse names the constriction the shared crossing is measured from.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, tight, constricted.
צַר
This shade of the name makes Egypt signify constriction as well as a place.
meitzar: A narrow place, strait.
מֵצַר
A meitzar is a tight passage; the verse’s repeated crossing carries movement through such narrowness.
יְדַעְתֶּם
yedatem
GROWS FROM
י־ד־ע
y-d-ʿ
To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
English “know” can sound like a detached fact; yada holds recognition grounded in contact. Here, knowing is tied directly to the dwelling and crossing named in the sentence.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know, recognize.
יָדַע
The root carries knowing as recognition through encounter.
daʿat: Knowledge, understanding.
דַּעַת
This noun shows the knowledge that grows from the same root of knowing.
THE PATTERN
What a people has crossed together becomes knowledge that can be carried forward.
And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.For the LORD our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed:Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea;THE THREAD
For the LORD our God, he it is that brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and which did those great signs in our sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the people through whom we passed:Joshua repeats the same Hebrew root, עבר (ʿ-b-r), in “through whom we passed.” Deuteronomy’s “we” and “you” crossing becomes an explicit shared passage through Egypt and among the peoples.
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