What Does Numbers 33:52 Mean in the King James?

Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:

Numbers 33:52 · 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.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The verb translated “drive out” is also used for “inherit,” binding dispossession and possession together in the verse.

THE MEANING

The verse gives you an uncompromising command: drive out every inhabitant, destroy every picture and molten image, and pull down every high place. Its repeated “all” leaves no remainder within its stated scope. The verb for driving out also belongs to the word family for taking possession, binding expulsion to inheritance.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that a new possession can coexist with every prior claim and worship marker: here, possession is inseparable from their removal.

THE ROOT

וְהוֹרַשְׁתֶּם

vehorashtem

GROWS FROM

ירש

To take possession or inherit; in the causative stem, to dispossess.

The Hebrew verb translated “drive out” is the causative form of ⁨ירשׁ⁩, a root also used for inheriting or possessing. The verse binds expulsion to acquisition: the land becomes inheritance through dispossession.

ALSO GROWS

ureshu: Possess, take possession

וּרְשׁוּ

Deuteronomy 1:8 uses this form from the same root for entering and possessing the land, revealing the root’s other direction.

morashah: Inheritance, possession

מוֹרָשָׁה

This noun from the same root names what possession becomes: an inheritance.

THE PATTERN

The text depicts a claim on sacred space as complete only when its rival occupants and visible forms of worship are removed.

But thus shall ye deal with them; ye shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire.

Deuteronomy 7:5 · KJVThe removal extends from people to altars and images, joining dispossession of the land with the destruction of its worship forms.

Know for a certainty that the LORD your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you; but they shall be snares and traps unto you, and scourges in your sides, and thorns in your eyes, until ye perish from off this good land which the LORD your God hath given you.

Joshua 23:13 · KJVThe verse gives the inverse: when the nations remain, they become snares and thorns within the land.

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;

John 2:15 · KJVThe temple scene echoes the clearing of occupied sacred space, though its occupants and scale differ from the command in Numbers.

THE THREAD

Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their seed after them.

Deuteronomy 1:8 · KJV

Numbers uses the causative form of ⁨י־ר־שׁ⁩ (y-r-sh), “to dispossess”; Deuteronomy uses ⁨וּרְשׁוּ⁩ (ureshu), “possess,” from the same root. The root carries both sides of the movement: removing a present claim and entering into inheritance.

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