What Does Exodus 3:20 Mean in the King James?
And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.
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 שָׁלַח root names both the hand God sends out and the release Egypt is forced to give.
THE MEANING
This verse makes release tangible as something sent into what holds you: the hand reaches out, Egypt is struck by wonders, and those held are let go. The sequence does not soften its violence; the force holding the people is met with force.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The power holding you does not have the final say over your release.
THE ROOT
וְשָׁלַחְתִּי
ve-shalachti
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send, send forth, release, let go.
“stretch out” in this verse is ve-shalachti. English gives the same verb two different faces: the hand is “stretched out,” while Pharaoh “lets go.” Hebrew uses שָׁלַח for both, sending forth is the force that reaches into the grip and the motion that finally opens it. In this verse, release follows a direct strike, so the word’s freedom carries the passage’s violence with it.
ALSO GROWS
yeshallach: He will send forth; he will let go.
יְשַׁלַּח
This is the same root later in the verse: the movement that sends the hand out also names Egypt’s release of the people.
shilluach: Sending away, dismissal, release.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch shows that letting go can mean sending someone onward, not merely ceasing to hold them.
נִפְלְאֹתַי
nifla'otai
GROWS FROM
פלא
Be extraordinary or marvelous, beyond ordinary understanding.
The verse calls the acts against Egypt “wonders”: they are not decorative marvels but interventions beyond what Egypt can contain or explain. The confrontation itself becomes a disclosure, as power is exposed through what exceeds Egypt’s control.
ALSO GROWS
pele: Wonder, marvel.
פֶּלֶא
This noun carries the root’s sense of an act that exceeds the ordinary, illuminating the force of the wonders named here.
nifla: Wonderful, extraordinary.
נִפְלָא
The same root describes what stands beyond ordinary expectation, the quality these acts bear in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Confinement is broken through a decisive act of deliverance, and those held are brought out.
Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments:He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and brake their bands in sunder.The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,THE THREAD
Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.In Exodus 3:10, “I will send thee” uses the same שָׁלַח root that later names the hand sent against Egypt and Pharaoh sending the people out. The root makes this a chain of sending: messenger, confronting hand, release.
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