What Does Numbers 11:14 Mean?
"I cannot carry all this people alone, for it is too heavy for me."
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
I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.THE KEY
What belongs to a whole people has become the weight of one person.
THE MEANING
When the needs of many gather on one person, the load can exceed their capacity; this verse says so plainly. “Bear” names the act of carrying, while “heavy” names the weight pressing beyond the carrier. The verse gives clear language to that limit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that caring enough makes one person able to carry everyone alone.
THE ROOT
נָשָׂא
nasa
GROWS FROM
נשא
To lift, carry, or bear.
“carry” in this verse is nasa. The verb translated “bear” belongs to a word family that includes both carrying and being lifted up. The verse’s strain comes into focus: the whole community’s weight has landed on one bearer.
ALSO GROWS
massa: A burden or load.
מַשָּׂא
This noun from the same root makes explicit the load implicit in the act of bearing.
nasi: A chief or prince; one raised up.
נָשִׂיא
The branch joins carrying with elevation, sharpening the image of weight placed upon a single person.
כָּבֵד
kaved
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty.
The root of “heavy” also gives words for weight and honor. Here the weight is felt as pressure: the responsibility has more mass than one person can bear.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight, honor, or glory.
כָּבוֹד
This branch preserves the root’s sense of weight, showing that “heavy” belongs to a wider language of weightiness.
kibbed: To honor or treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
The same root can describe giving weight to someone, while this verse describes the burden of weight resting on one person.
THE PATTERN
A load larger than one person’s capacity is answered by shared bearing.
You will surely wither, both you and this people with you, for this word is too heavy for you; you are not able to do it alone.Carry one another's weights, and so you fill up the instruction of the Anointed One.Now we who are strong owe it to carry the weaknesses of the powerless, and not to please ourselves.THE THREAD
You will surely wither, both you and this people with you, for this word is too heavy for you; you are not able to do it alone.The same Hebrew root, כבד (kaved), describes the task as heavy in both verses. Exodus makes the consequence plain: the weight wears down both the carrier and the people when one person holds it alone.
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