What Does Numbers 15:18 Mean?
Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land to which I bring you,
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
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye come into the land whither I bring you,THE KEY
In Hebrew, “come” and “bring” share one root, so your arrival and the act carrying you there belong to one movement.
THE MEANING
The verse joins your arrival with the movement carrying you there: you enter, while a bringing is already directed toward you. The place ahead is held within that act of being brought.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that reaching what lies ahead depends on your movement alone; the verse names both your coming and the one bringing you.
THE ROOT
בְּבֹאֲכֶם
bevo'akhem
GROWS FROM
בוא
Come, enter; in the Hiphil form, cause to come or bring.
“come / bring” in this verse is bevo'akhem. English separates “come” from “bring,” but both forms here grow from בוא (bo, “come, enter”). The verse holds the entrants’ arrival and the act bringing them into the land inside one movement.
ALSO GROWS
bo: come, enter
בּוֹא
This is the form behind “when ye come,” naming the entrants’ movement.
mevi: bringing, causing to enter
מֵבִיא
This Hiphil form is translated “I bring you”; the same root names the movement from the other side.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents arrival as entering joined to the act of being brought.
And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all the goods they had gathered, and the living souls they had made in Haran. And they went out to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came.For the LORD your God brings you into a good land, a land of streams of waters, of springs and deeps that rise from valleys and hills.And if I go and make ready a place for you, I come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, you also may be.THE THREAD
For the LORD your God brings you into a good land, a land of streams of waters, of springs and deeps that rise from valleys and hills.The “bringeth” in Deuteronomy grows from בוא (bo, “come, enter”), the same root behind both “come” and “bring” in Numbers 15:18. Deuteronomy then names the destination as good, watered land, making the shared movement one of being brought into a place that sustains life.
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