What Does Numbers 11:10 Mean?
Then Moses heard the people weeping, family by family, each man at the door of his tent; and the burning of the LORD's anger flared greatly, and it was evil in the eyes of Moses.
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
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 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 and responded to their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
And God heard and responded to 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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