What Does Leviticus 12:1 Mean?
And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,THE KEY
The word arrives as an address to Moses, whose name carries the image of being drawn out.
THE MEANING
The reader meets the beginning of instruction as a voice addressing Moses; what follows opens through speech. Moses’ name carries the image of being drawn out, so the address meets a hearer whose name already holds emergence into open life.
THE ROOT
וַיְדַבֵּר
wayyedabber
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; this word family also names a word, matter, or thing.
“spoke” in this verse is wayyedabber. The Hebrew word family holds speaking and the matter spoken of together. Here, speech is the doorway into the substance of the instruction that follows.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
The same root connects what is spoken with the matter at hand; the LORD’s speech carries the instruction’s substance.
medabber: Speaking; one who speaks.
מְדַבֵּר
This form keeps the act of speaking visible, showing the instruction beginning as an active address.
מֹשֶׁה
Mōsheh
GROWS FROM
משה
To draw out, as in drawing someone out of water.
Moses’ name is explained through מָשָׁה, “to draw out”: his name remembers being drawn from water. The word is addressed to someone whose name already carries the movement from being held to being brought out.
ALSO GROWS
māshāh: To draw out.
מָשָׁה
This verb supplies the name’s scriptural explanation and gives Moses’ presence in the verse a meaning beyond a label.
Mōsheh: Moses, whose name is linked to being drawn out.
מֹשֶׁה
The name preserves the act of drawing out in the person receiving the word.
THE PATTERN
God’s speech is a living address whose word carries the matter it sets before the hearer.
And the LORD said to Moses, Come up to me into the mountain, and be there, and I will give you tablets of stone, and instruction, and commandments which I have written, that you may teach them.So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.My sheep hear and respond to my voice, and I perceive them, and they follow me.THE THREAD
And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses, the one drawn out, and she said, Because from the waters I drew him out.Exodus explains Moses’ name through מָשָׁה (māshāh), “to draw out.” Here, the LORD’s speech is addressed to Moses, so the word reaches someone whose name remembers being drawn out of the water.
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