What Does Numbers 16:43 Mean?
And Moses and Aaron came to the face of the tent of meeting.
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 Moses and Aaron came before the tabernacle of the congregation.THE KEY
The drawn-out one comes before the tent named for an appointed meeting: arrival turns toward encounter.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you as a scene of approach: Moses and Aaron come faceward to the tent whose name carries the sense of an appointed meeting. “Before” places them in front of a presence, and the place is defined by the encounter set there.
THE ROOT
אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד
ohel mo'ed
GROWS FROM
יעד
ya'ad
To appoint, designate, or set a meeting.
The Hebrew phrase means “tent of meeting.” מוֹעֵד (mo’ed) carries the sense of an appointed meeting or time, so the tent is named for the encounter set there.
ALSO GROWS
mo'ed: An appointed time or meeting place.
מוֹעֵד
The tent’s name carries the idea of an encounter set in place.
veno'adeti: “And I will meet,” as in Exodus 25:22.
וְנוֹעַדְתִּי
This form uses the same root for the meeting God says will happen at the tent.
אֶל־פְּנֵי
el-penei
GROWS FROM
פנה
panah
To turn or face toward.
“Before” here places Moses and Aaron in front of the tent, with the Hebrew form belonging to the face/front family. The phrase carries the nearness of facing something, not just being somewhere nearby.
ALSO GROWS
panim: Face, front, or presence.
פָּנִים
It shows the face-oriented sense carried by “before.”
lifnei: Before, in front of, or in the presence of.
לִפְנֵי
This related form makes the spatial and relational senses of “before” meet.
מֹשֶׁה
Mosheh
GROWS FROM
משׁה
mashah
To draw out, especially from water.
Moses’ name is linked in Exodus to being drawn from the water. Here the one whose name carries that emergence comes before the appointed meeting place, bringing the name’s sense of being drawn out alongside the movement toward encounter.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: To draw out.
מָשָׁה
This verb carries the action behind the name Moses.
meshitihu: “I drew him out,” the wording connected to Moses’ name in Exodus 2:10.
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
The name’s link to being drawn out of water gives Moses’ arrival here an added depth.
THE PATTERN
Encounter is marked by movement toward an appointed presence, whether at a meeting place, among an assembly, or through drawing near.
And the LORD spoke with Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend. And he turned again into the camp, but Joshua son of Nun, the young man who served him, did not leave the tent.For where two or three are gathered together in my nature, there I am in the midst of them.Let us draw near with a true heart in the fullness of trust, our hearts sprinkled from a burdened shared sight, and our bodies bathed in clean waters.THE THREAD
And there I meet with you, and I speak with you from above the covering, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the witness, all that I command you to the children of Israel.The tent’s name and God’s promise to meet use the same root, יעד (ya’ad, appoint or meet). Exodus names the place by the encounter set there, so Moses and Aaron’s approach is a movement toward the meeting itself.
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