What Does Deuteronomy 33:10 Mean in the King James?
They shall teach Jacob thy judgments, and Israel thy law: they shall put incense before thee, and whole burnt sacrifice upon thine altar.
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 service that teaches God’s instruction also turns toward God in rising incense and a whole offering.
THE MEANING
This verse holds instruction and offering within one calling: God’s judgments and instruction reach Israel, while incense rises before God and the whole offering rests on the altar. The reader encounters service moving in both directions, teaching among people and offering before God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that receiving instruction and presenting devotion belong in separate compartments; here, they are joined in one service.
THE ROOT
תּוֹרָה
torah
GROWS FROM
ירה
y-r-h
To throw or point; by extension, to direct and instruct.
“law” in this verse is torah. Torah carries the sense of instruction that directs a path, and the same root yields a word for one who teaches. Here it names what the Levites carry to Israel alongside God’s judgments.
ALSO GROWS
torah: Instruction or teaching.
תּוֹרָה
This is the instruction the Levites teach Israel.
moreh: A teacher; one who directs or instructs.
מוֹרֶה
The related word makes visible the person who carries instruction to others.
קְטֹרֶת
qetoret
GROWS FROM
קטר
q-t-r
To burn incense and make smoke rise.
The incense noun retains the action of its root: burning sends smoke upward before God. Placed between teaching and the whole offering, it marks this service as both instruction among the people and an approach before the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
qetoret: Incense.
קְטֹרֶת
This is the incense placed before God in the verse.
qitter: He burned incense.
קִטֵּר
The verbal branch reveals the action contained in the incense named here.
כָּלִיל
kalil
GROWS FROM
כלל
k-l-l
To make complete or whole.
Kalil carries the sense of entirety: the offering is whole upon the altar. Its root also appears in kol, “all,” letting the offering’s totality resonate with the whole service described here.
ALSO GROWS
kol: All; the whole.
כֹּל
This branch shares the root’s sense of entirety with the whole offering.
kalal: To complete or make whole.
כָּלַל
The verb carries the root’s movement toward completeness that kalil names in the offering.
THE PATTERN
Service before God joins instruction carried to people with what is presented before God.
For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts.For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins:I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.THE THREAD
And he shall put the incense upon the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not:The incense here is the same qetoret, from the root qatar, to burn incense and make smoke rise. Leviticus shows the cloud covering the mercy seat so that the priest does not die, giving the incense in Deuteronomy a concrete and consequential place in the approach before the LORD.
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