What Does Numbers 16:24 Mean?
Speak to the congregation, saying, Get you up from around the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.
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 congregation, saying, Get you up from about the tabernacle of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.THE KEY
The command draws a physical boundary: the congregation must rise away from the dwelling named here before judgment falls.
THE MEANING
You hear a public summons to move away from the dwelling of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. The boundary is physical, and the judgment that follows gives the warning life-and-death force. The verse speaks now as a warning that nearness to a dangerous place does not make it safe.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A congregation is not automatically safe while it remains gathered around a dangerous center.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁכָּן
mishkan
GROWS FROM
שכן
sh-k-n
to dwell, settle, or remain
Mishkan means a dwelling, from shakan, to dwell. The related word shakhen means neighbor, one who dwells nearby: the root links a place of dwelling with those who live around it, sharpening the verse’s focus on the congregation’s proximity.
ALSO GROWS
shākhan: to dwell, settle, remain
שָׁכַן
This verb shares the seed of mishkan and makes the dwelling sense audible inside “tabernacle.”
shākhen: neighbor; one who dwells nearby
שָׁכֵן
This branch connects dwelling with proximity, the very relation the command changes by moving the congregation away.
THE PATTERN
A summons to leave a place comes before the judgment that makes proximity perilous.
And he spoke to the congregation, saying, Turn aside, I pray you, from the tents of these wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest you be swept away in all their shortcomings.And when dawn rose, the messengers hurried Lot, saying, Rise, take your wife and your two daughters who are here, lest you be swept away in the crookedness of the city.And I hear another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, so that you do not share in her shortcomings, and that you do not receive from her blows.THE THREAD
And let them make me a set-apart place, that I may pitch my tent among them.The word mishkan (מִשְׁכָּן, mishkan, dwelling) shares its root with shakan (שָׁכַן, shākhan, to dwell), the verb translated “dwell” here. The shared root shows how a place of dwelling and the presence within it belong to one word-family.
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