What Does Numbers 14:7 Mean?
And they said to all the gathered company of the children of Israel, saying, The land that we crossed to scout it out is an exceedingly good land.
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 they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, The land, which we passed through to search it, is an exceeding good land.THE KEY
The land’s goodness is not a distant promise: it is what the speakers report after passing through and searching it.
THE MEANING
Goodness here is concrete: it is encountered, examined, and then spoken plainly to a whole community. The repeated emphasis makes its abundance part of the testimony, not a faint impression.
THE ROOT
טוֹבָה
tovah
GROWS FROM
טוב
tov
Goodness, benefit, and what is favorable.
The land is called טוֹבָה (tovah, good), the feminine form of טוֹב (tov, good); מְאֹד מְאֹד (me’od me’od, exceedingly, exceedingly) intensifies the claim. This root also yields טוּב (tuv, goodness) and מֵיטַב (meitav, the best or choicest), opening the report from a simple rating into goodness as well-being and abundant quality.
ALSO GROWS
tuv: Goodness, well-being, or prosperity.
טוּב
This form names goodness as a reality with substance, widening the land’s goodness beyond a passing impression.
meitav: The best or choicest part.
מֵיטַב
The same root family can name what is most favorable; the report’s doubled emphasis presents the land’s goodness as abundant.
לָתוּר
latur
GROWS FROM
תור
tur
To explore, seek through, or look about for something.
“to scout it out” in this verse is latur. Here לָתוּר (latur, to explore) makes the report a finding reached by traversing the land. The same root appears in תָּתוּרוּ (taturu, seek after), where the gaze follows what the heart and eyes desire; here, searching yields a concrete testimony.
ALSO GROWS
vayaturu: They explored or searched through.
וַיָּתֻרוּ
This form describes movement through the land, linking the claim of goodness to what is discovered by going through it.
taturu: You seek after or follow.
תָּתוּרוּ
This form shows that the root can describe a gaze directed toward what draws it, giving “search” the sense of active, purposeful looking.
THE PATTERN
Goodness is encountered as a real quality and recognized through its benefit.
O taste and see that the LORD is good. Flourishing is the strong one who takes shelter in him.You are good, and you do good; teach me your statutes.Every good giving and every complete gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no shifting and no shadow cast by turning.THE THREAD
You are good, and you do good; teach me your statutes.The Hebrew places טוֹב (tov, good) beside מֵיטִיב (meitiv, doing good), joining goodness as a quality to goodness in action. That pairing opens “good land” as more than a rating: it names a beneficial reality encountered and testified to.
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