What Does Numbers 4:47 Mean in the King James?
From thirty years old and upward even unto fifty years old, every one that came to do the service of the ministry, and the service of the burden in the tabernacle of the congregation,
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 gives sacred work two faces, service performed and weight carried, and places both inside a defined season.
THE MEANING
Your service is not weightless: the passage holds work and carrying together, down to the load a body bears. It also places that work inside a defined span, so limits belong to the shape of service.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sacred service must be weightless or limitless: the verse names both the burden and the span in which it is carried.
THE ROOT
מַשָּׂא
massa
GROWS FROM
נָשָׂא
nasa
To lift, carry, or bear.
English can make “burden” sound like a feeling; מַשָּׂא (massa) is a load borne. The same root appears in language about bearing guilt, where it can also mean forgiving or removing it: what is carried can be lifted away.
ALSO GROWS
nasa: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This verb reveals the physical action inside “burden”: it is something borne, not only a difficulty felt.
nōśēʾ ʿāwōn: Bearing guilt; in this Hebrew idiom, forgiving or removing guilt.
נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן
The load-bearing image can extend to guilt: a weight may be carried, then released.
עֲבֹדָה
avodah
GROWS FROM
עָבַד
avad
To work or serve.
The Hebrew family connects the work of serving with the servant who does it. English separates role from task, while the verse’s repeated service language keeps labor at the center.
ALSO GROWS
avad: To work or serve.
עָבַד
The verb shows that “service” here is active labor, not merely a title or intention.
eved: Servant.
עֶבֶד
The shared root links the person who serves with the work being done.
THE PATTERN
Sacred labor has both service to perform and weight to carry, with responsibility shared among people.
And let them judge the people at all seasons: and it shall be, that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.THE THREAD
And thou shalt put the staves into the rings by the sides of the ark, that the ark may be borne with them.The Hebrew behind “borne” comes from nasa, the same root as this verse’s “burden” (massa). The sacred object is moved by people who lift and carry it, making the “service of the burden” concrete load-bearing work.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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