What Does Numbers 20:14 Mean?
And Moses sent messengers from Kadesh to the king of Edom, Thus says your brother Israel, You know all the weariness that has found us.
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 sent messengers from Kadesh unto the king of Edom, Thus saith thy brother Israel, Thou knowest all the travail that hath befallen us:THE KEY
The one named for being drawn out sends the people’s weariness ahead to a brother, so the movement toward release begins as a message.
THE MEANING
Moses sends a word carrying both kinship and the people’s whole account of what has worn them down. A boundary is met through relationship and acknowledged burden; release begins with something sent outward.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that hardship must be made smaller or left out to deserve a hearing.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלַח
vayyishlach
GROWS FROM
שלח
shalach
To send forth, release, or let go.
The word for sending carries the movement of release within it: something goes outward from the one holding it. The first step toward passage here is a message sent across the boundary.
ALSO GROWS
shilluach: Sending away; dismissal
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch shows the same root describing something being sent away or released.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of the waters of Shiloah
שִׁלֹחַ
The sent waters echo the root’s outward movement: what is released can travel toward restoration.
הַתְּלָאָה
hat-tela'ah
GROWS FROM
לאה
la'ah
To grow weary, tire, or toil.
This word for travail grows from the seed of weariness: hardship is not just an event but the exhaustion borne through it. The word “all” makes that accumulated burden part of what the message carries.
ALSO GROWS
la'ah: To grow weary or tire
לָאָה
The root names the weariness inside the hardship Israel says has befallen them.
vayyil'u: They wearied themselves
וַיִּלְאוּ
This same root describes people wearing themselves down through effort, giving “travail” the texture of exhaustion endured.
מֹשֶׁה
Moshe
GROWS FROM
משה
mashah
To draw out, as from water.
Moses’ name carries the memory of being drawn out of water. Here, the one drawn out sends a message outward, extending that name-nature into an act that reaches across a boundary.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: To draw out
מָשָׁה
This is the action the name Moses is linked to in the naming story.
meshitehu: I drew him out
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
The phrase connects Moses’ name to the experience of being drawn from water.
THE PATTERN
A burden becomes part of the path forward when it is named to the one being addressed.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.I pour out my murmuring before him; I set forth my narrow place before him.When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, Son of David, have compassion on me.THE THREAD
And now, our God, the great, the mighty, the God of awe, who keeps covenant and faithful love, do not let all this trouble seem a light thing before you, which has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, and our fathers, and upon all your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day.Numbers’ “travail” and Nehemiah’s “trouble” translate the same Hebrew noun, תְּלָאָה (tela’ah, wearing hardship), from לָאָה (la’ah, grow weary). In both, the accumulated burden is placed before an addressed listener as something that deserves to be fully seen.
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