What Does Numbers 14:17 Mean?
And now, I beseech you, let the strength of my Lord grow great, as you have spoken, 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 now, I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou hast spoken, saying,THE KEY
The plea asks for God’s already spoken character to become visible as power: “be great” carries the sense of grow.
THE MEANING
The verse makes divine power answer to a word already spoken: the request is for that power to grow great in keeping with what God has declared. For you now, power is joined to God’s revealed nature rather than left as an undefined force.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that divine power is an undefined force, separate from what God has already spoken.
THE ROOT
יִגְדַּל
yigdal
GROWS FROM
גדל
To grow or become great.
The Hebrew says “let it grow great,” so greatness here is something becoming visible or increasing. The English can make “great” sound like a fixed quality; the verb carries movement.
ALSO GROWS
gadol: Great, large.
גָּדוֹל
This familiar adjective shares the root and names the quality the prayer asks to grow.
migdal: Tower.
מִגְדָּל
The tower is a raised structure; the shared root connects greatness with rising or enlargement.
gedullah: Greatness, majesty.
גְּדֻלָּה
This noun names the greatness that the verse expresses as something becoming great.
דִּבַּרְתָּ
dibbarta
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak or declare.
The verb for “you have spoken” shares its root with the noun for “word” or “matter.” Hebrew thus holds the declaration and what is declared in one word-family: the plea rests on a spoken word with substance.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word, matter, thing.
דָּבָר
The noun shares the root with “you have spoken,” joining the speech to its substance.
dibbur: Speech, utterance.
דִּבּוּר
This branch names the act or content of speaking that grounds the plea.
כֹּחַ
koach
GROWS FROM
כ־ו־ח
Strength, ability, capacity.
“strength” in this verse is koach. Koach can name the capacity to act, not only force in the abstract. Here that capacity belongs to “my Lord,” and the plea is for it to grow great in line with what has been spoken.
ALSO GROWS
kocho: His strength or power.
כֹּחוֹ
The possessive form keeps the same noun while naming whose capacity is in view.
kochi: My strength or power.
כֹּחִי
This form shows how the same word can name capacity as belonging to a different person.
THE PATTERN
God’s power is made known through the word that declares God’s nature.
Yet he delivered them for the sake of his nature, to make his strength known.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.Who, being the radiance of his weight and the exact stamp of his foundation, carrying all things by the word of his power, when he had made the cleansing of shortcomings, sat down at the right hand of the Greatness on high.THE THREAD
Ah, Lord GOD! Behold, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great strength and outstretched arm, and nothing is too hard for you.The root כוח (koach, strength or capacity) appears in Jeremiah’s phrase “by thy great power.” Numbers asks for that power to grow great; Jeremiah names it at work in creation, opening the plea onto capacity that makes the world.
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