What Does Numbers 10:28 Mean in the King James?
Thus were the journeyings of the children of Israel according to their armies, when they set forward.
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 one root for both the journey’s stages and the act of setting out: a whole road is made of departures.
THE MEANING
The verse gathers each departure into an ordered whole: movement happens in stages, and each stage belongs to a people moving together. Your path is not one blur between starting point and arrival; it is made of distinct moments of setting out.
THE ROOT
מַסְעֵי
masʿei
GROWS FROM
נסע
n-s-ʿ
To set out or depart; movement from one place toward another.
“journeyings / set forward” in this verse is masʿei. The words translated “journeyings” and “set forward” grow from the same root. The plural stages of the journey and each act of departure are bound together: the road takes shape through repeated setting out.
ALSO GROWS
massāʿ: Journey; a stage of travel.
מַסָּע
The journey is named from the same root as setting out, linking the whole route to its successive departures.
nāsaʿ: To depart; to set out.
נָסַע
This is the action named in the verse’s final phrase, giving each stage its forward movement.
THE PATTERN
A journey takes shape through successive acts of setting out, each real before the destination is reached.
And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south.And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.THE THREAD
And when the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle, then after that the children of Israel journeyed: and in the place where the cloud abode, there the children of Israel pitched their tents.The Hebrew root נסע (nasaʿ, to set out) links “journeyed” here with both “journeyings” and “set forward” in Numbers 10:28. Here, setting out is paired with the cloud lifting and with pitching tents where it settles, holding departure and rest within the same journey.
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