What Does Exodus 12:47 Mean in the King James?

All the congregation of Israel shall keep it.

Exodus 12:47 · KJV

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

What the English calls “keeping” is an act the whole assembly does together.

THE MEANING

The verse speaks to you as part of a shared life: its meaning is carried by what the whole assembly does together. What is received takes shape in a common act rather than remaining a private idea.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that a shared inheritance can stay alive through private recognition alone, without being enacted together.

THE ROOT

יַעֲשׂוּ

yaʿasu

GROWS FROM

עשה

ʿasah

Do, make, bring into action.

The Hebrew verb beneath “keep it” names an act: the whole assembly does it. The same root gives words for work and deed, linking the shared observance to something made real through action.

ALSO GROWS

maʿaseh: Deed, work, or thing made.

מַעֲשֶׂה

The assembly’s doing belongs to the same word family as a work or deed.

ʿasiyyah: Action or doing.

עֲשִׂיָּה

This branch keeps the emphasis on action: what is shared takes form in what the people do.

עֵדָה

ʿedah

GROWS FROM

יעד

yaʿad

Appoint, designate, or set a meeting.

The word for congregation is connected with appointment and meeting. The verse presents a gathered people joined in a common act, rather than an anonymous crowd.

ALSO GROWS

yaʿad: To appoint, designate, or set a meeting.

יָעַד

The root’s sense of appointment adds shape to the assembly: these people are gathered into a shared practice.

moʿed: An appointed time, meeting, or festival.

מוֹעֵד

This related word connects a gathered people with a shared appointed occasion.

THE PATTERN

Shared meaning takes root when a people carry it through a common practice.

For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD, to do justice and judgment; that the LORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.

Genesis 18:19 · KJVThe way of the LORD takes form in a household’s shared practice of justice and judgment.

Ye shall diligently keep the commandments of the LORD your God, and his testimonies, and his statutes, which he hath commanded thee.

Deuteronomy 6:17 · KJVThe people carry their shared instruction by keeping it in practice.

Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:8 · KJVA community gives its shared meaning form through a practice it keeps together.

THE THREAD

I remember the days of old; I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands.

Psalm 143:5 · KJV

“Works” here is ⁨מַעֲשֶׂה⁩ (maʿaseh), from the same root ⁨עשה⁩ (ʿasah) as “do it” in Exodus. The assembly’s shared act becomes a way of holding the works of God in living memory.

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