What Does Leviticus 9:23 Mean in the King James?
And Moses and Aaron went into the tabernacle of the congregation, and came out, and blessed the people: and the glory of the LORD appeared unto all the people.
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 blessing culminates in the LORD’s weight becoming visible to everyone.
THE MEANING
You stand among people who receive blessing and see the LORD’s weight appear. The presence is not confined to a hidden interior; it becomes perceptible to the whole assembly.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The LORD’s presence is confined to a sacred place and remains inaccessible to the people.
THE ROOT
כָּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty.
Kavod carries the sense of weight: the LORD’s glory is not merely a reputation or an idea, but weight that becomes perceptible. Here the people see what English can make sound abstract.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
The adjective makes the physical sense of kavod audible: what appears has weight.
kibbed: To honor or treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
Honor gives weight its relational form; what is weighty is recognized as such.
וַיְבָרֲכוּ
vayevarkhu
GROWS FROM
ברך
b-r-k
To bless; the root also carries the image of bending the knee.
“blessed” in this verse is vayevarkhu. The blessing carries a bodily image of bending the knee, not only a spoken wish. It comes before the visible kavod, placing the people’s encounter with divine weight within an act of blessing.
ALSO GROWS
berekh: Knee.
בֶּרֶךְ
The shared root makes the posture of bending part of the word’s texture.
berakhah: Blessing.
בְּרָכָה
This is the blessing extended to the people before the LORD’s weight appears.
מֹשֶׁה
Moshe
GROWS FROM
משה
m-sh-h
To draw out.
Moses’ name carries the nature of one drawn out. Here he enters the tent and comes back out with Aaron, standing at the threshold where blessing moves toward what the people can see.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: To draw out.
מָשָׁה
The verb gives the name its action: being drawn from one place into another.
meshithihu: I drew him out.
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This form makes the name’s root meaning explicit and echoes the passage’s movement out from the tent.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s weight becomes communal sight, moving presence from sanctuary language into what people can see.
Then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle.But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. And the glory of the LORD appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel.And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.THE THREAD
And the sight of the glory of the LORD was like devouring fire on the top of the mount in the eyes of the children of Israel.The same Hebrew word כָּבוֹד (kavod, weight or glory) names the LORD’s visible weight in both verses. Leviticus says the whole people see it; Exodus gives that sight the image of devouring fire.
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