What Does Numbers 11:10 Mean in the King James?
Then Moses heard the people weep throughout their families, every man in the door of his tent: and the anger of the LORD was kindled greatly; Moses also was displeased.
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 verse makes communal grief cross every threshold: before anger and dismay appear, the weeping has already reached Moses’ ears.
THE MEANING
When grief fills a community, sorrow at many doorways becomes audible to the one who hears. The LORD’s anger burns greatly, and Moses sees what is happening as bad; the verse holds the people’s sorrow and the force of both responses together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that grief stays private just because each person stands at their own doorway: the weeping fills the camp and reaches Moses.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁמַע
vayishmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear or listen.
The sentence begins with Moses hearing before it names either anger or displeasure: the camp’s weeping enters his awareness as a shared sound. The same root forms words for hearing and for a report, showing how what is heard can become present beyond the one who carries it.
ALSO GROWS
shemuʿah: A report or tidings.
שְׁמוּעָה
The people’s weeping reaches Moses as something he can hear and know, not as suffering sealed inside each household.
shemiʿah: Hearing or listening.
שְׁמִיעָה
This branch brings the verse’s first action into focus: the people’s distress becomes audible to Moses.
THE PATTERN
Grief voiced in the open reaches beyond the person who carries it.
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.The righteous cry, and the LORD heareth, and delivereth them out of all their troubles.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.Numbers uses שָׁמַע (shamaʿ, hear) for Moses hearing the people’s weeping, and Exodus uses the same root when God hears their groaning. Exodus joins hearing to remembering the covenant, showing how voiced distress can move beyond the one who carries it.
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