What Does Numbers 15:35 Mean?
And the LORD said to Moses, The man shall surely be put to death, and all the assembly shall stone him with stones outside the camp.
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 the LORD said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp.THE KEY
The verse doubles the death-root and gives the whole congregation a role in the execution beyond the camp’s boundary.
THE MEANING
The reader meets a sentence of death by stoning, carried out by the entire congregation beyond the camp. The verse places communal agency and physical exclusion in the same scene, and leaves the violence explicit.
THE ROOT
מוֹת יוּמָת
mot yumat
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
to die; death
Hebrew repeats the root מות (m-w-t) in מוֹת יוּמָת (mot yumat), an intensified form rendered “shall surely be put to death.” The next clause names the whole congregation as the agents who carry out the sentence.
ALSO GROWS
yamut: he shall die
יָמוּת
This finite verb is another branch of the same root; here the doubled form intensifies the death sentence.
mavet: death
מָוֶת
The noun names the outcome that this sentence states directly.
מַחֲנֶה
machaneh
GROWS FROM
חנה
ḥ-n-h
to encamp; pitch camp
The camp’s name grows from a root meaning to encamp. “Outside the camp” marks the community’s physical boundary, and the congregation carries out the sentence beyond that shared space.
ALSO GROWS
chanah: to encamp; pitch camp
חָנָה
The verb names the act that forms the camp, whose boundary the verse places the condemned man beyond.
machaneh: camp; encampment; host
מַחֲנֶה
This word names the assembled community’s space, beyond which the verse locates the execution.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places the condemned or rejected body beyond the community’s boundary, making exclusion visible.
Bring out the one who cursed, outside the camp, and let all who heard him lean their hands upon his head, and let all the assembly stone him.And they threw him out of the city and stoned him, and the witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man called Saul.So Jesus also, that he might set the people apart through his own blood, suffered outside the gate.THE THREAD
Bring out the one who cursed, outside the camp, and let all who heard him lean their hands upon his head, and let all the assembly stone him.Numbers 15:35 and Leviticus 24:14 use the same Hebrew phrase, מִחוּץ לַמַּחֲנֶה (mi-chutz la-machaneh, “outside the camp”), and both assign the stoning to the congregation. Their shared wording reveals a repeated sentence pattern, with the camp boundary and collective act joined together.
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