What Does Deuteronomy 32:47 Mean in the King James?
For it is not a vain thing for you; because it is your life: and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.
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 Hebrew uses דָּבָר (davar, “word, matter, thing”) twice where the KJV says “thing,” showing that the word itself is named as your life.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you now: this word is no empty matter but your life. It ties the length of your days to the ground you inhabit, giving the teaching consequence in lived time.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that this teaching is an empty religious matter with no bearing on lived life is undone: the verse calls it your life and links it to your days.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak or utter; the related noun carries the senses of word, matter, and thing.
The Hebrew uses the same noun for both “vain thing” and “this thing,” while that noun also means “word.” The verse’s matter is therefore not separate from its message: this word is called your life.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: spoke, uttered
דִּבֵּר
The verb makes audible the speaking carried in the noun davar.
davar: word, matter, thing
דָּבָר
One Hebrew word holds together what English separates as spoken word and ordinary thing.
חַיֵּיכֶם
chayyechem
GROWS FROM
חיה
ch-y-h
To live, be alive.
The verse names the davar as the hearer’s life, not as a supplement to it. The root’s branches describe both being alive and living beings, placing the word within the substance of life.
ALSO GROWS
chai: alive, living
חַי
This adjective shares the root for life named in the verse.
chayyah: living creature
חַיָּה
The root also names a living being, making its life-bearing sense concrete.
THE PATTERN
The word given by God is presented as life-bearing substance that sustains the hearer through actual days.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.THE THREAD
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.Deuteronomy 8:3 uses דָּבָר (davar, “word”) for what proceeds from the LORD’s mouth and says that by it a person lives. The same noun appears here where the KJV says “thing,” and this verse calls it “your life”, the shared root binds word and life together.
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