What Does Numbers 17:4 Mean?
And you shall set them down in the tent of meeting before the witness, where I will meet with 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
And thou shalt lay them up in the tabernacle of the congregation before the testimony, where I will meet with you.THE KEY
The word translated “meet” carries the sense of an appointed encounter, placing this meeting before testimony rather than leaving it abstract.
THE MEANING
The encounter is appointed, and it takes place with testimony held in view. Your meeting with God has a point of contact; it is not only an indistinct feeling.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that meeting God is an unlocated feeling: the verse places the encounter in a specific setting, before the testimony.
THE ROOT
אִוָּעֵד
’ivva’ed
GROWS FROM
י־ע־ד
To appoint, designate, or set a time or place.
“meet” in this verse is ’ivva’ed. The verb carries the sense of an encounter set in place. The nearby phrase אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד (ohel mo’ed, “tent of meeting”) belongs to the same word family: even the place is named for an appointed encounter.
ALSO GROWS
mo’ed: An appointed time, meeting, or assembly.
מוֹעֵד
The phrase “tent of meeting” uses this word, making the encounter part of the place’s name.
wənoʿadtî: “And I will meet,” by appointment.
וְנוֹעַדְתִּי
The same word family appears in Exodus 25:22, where God says, “there I will meet with thee.”
THE PATTERN
An encounter with God becomes concrete where testimony is held in view and presence is made known.
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.This is a continual rising offering throughout your generations, at the opening of the tent of meeting before the LORD, where I will meet you, to speak with you there.And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.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 same Hebrew root for an appointed meeting appears in both verses. Numbers places the encounter before the testimony; Exodus shows it above the mercy seat on the ark of the testimony.
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