What Does Numbers 20:10 Mean?
And Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, and he said to them, Hear and respond now, you rebels. Shall we bring out waters for you from this rock?
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 gathered the congregation together before the rock, and he said unto them, Hear now, ye rebels; must we fetch you water out of this rock?THE KEY
Moses, whose name is tied to being drawn out of water, asks whether “we” will bring water out of the rock.
THE MEANING
You can carry a story of being drawn out and still speak as though help depends on your own hands. The verse lets you hear both the congregation’s resistance and the strain in “must we fetch you water?” You can be a channel of help while frustration makes the channel sound like the source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that carrying the work makes you its source.
THE ROOT
מֹשֶׁה
Mōšeh
GROWS FROM
משה
m-sh-h
Draw out
Exodus 2:10 ties Moses’s name to being drawn out of the water. Here, the name-story echoes in a question about bringing water out, placing one who was drawn out beside a moment of provision.
ALSO GROWS
māšāh: To draw out
מָשָׁה
This verb gives the biblical explanation of Moses’s name.
yimšēnî: He drew me out
יִמְשֵׁנִי
This form describes being drawn from many waters, echoing the water imagery carried by Moses’s name.
נוֹצִיא
nōṣîʾ
GROWS FROM
יצא
y-ts-ʾ
Go out, come forth
“bring out” in this verse is nōṣîʾ. The Hebrew uses a causative form of a verb whose basic sense is coming out: “will we bring forth water?” The wording holds the speakers’ action beside the water’s emergence from the rock.
ALSO GROWS
yāṣāʾ: To go out, come forth
יָצָא
This is the base verb behind the speakers’ “bring out,” linking their action to the water’s emergence.
môṣāʾ: An outlet, an emergence
מוֹצָא
This noun carries the sense of what comes out, keeping the focus on the point of emergence.
הַמֹּרִים
ham-mōrîm
GROWS FROM
מרה
m-r-h
Rebel, resist
“rebels” in this verse is ham-mōrîm. The word names the congregation by its resistance, not simply by a passing mistake. That sharp accusation sits beside Moses’s own strained question about who will bring the water forth.
ALSO GROWS
merî: Rebellion
מְרִי
This noun names the resistant posture compressed into “ye rebels.”
mamrîm: Rebellious, those who resist
מַמְרִים
This related form shows the same root describing people by their ongoing resistance.
THE PATTERN
When provision passes through human hands, speech can mistake the instrument for its source.
They angered him at the waters of striving, and it went ill with Moses for their sakes. For they embittered his breath, so that he blurted with his lips.And you say in your heart, "My power and the might of my hand have made me this strength." But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to make strength, so that he may raise up his covenant, which he swore to your fathers, as it is this day.I planted, Apollos gave to drink, but God made it grow. So then neither is the one who plants anything, nor the one who gives to drink, but God, who makes it grow.THE THREAD
Look, I will stand before you there on the rock in Horeb. You will strike the rock, and waters will come out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so before the eyes of the elders of Israel.Numbers 20:10 uses a causative form of יָצָא (yatsa, “come out”), while Exodus 17:6 uses the same root for water coming out of the rock. The shared root links the action of bringing forth with the water’s emergence, and the earlier verse makes the LORD the one directing that provision.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us