What Does Numbers 20:3 Mean?
And the people strove with Moses, and spoke, saying, Would that we had expired, as our brothers expired, before the LORD!
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 the people chode with Moses, and spake, saying, Would God that we had died when our brethren died before the LORD!THE KEY
Grief and accusation become one movement: the wish to have died with the dead is spoken as a quarrel with the living.
THE MEANING
Grief over the dead can surface as a quarrel with the living and as a wish to have shared their death. The verse shows how loss can narrow speech until protest becomes its voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that grief always appears as quiet sadness: here it speaks as accusation and a wish to have shared death.
THE ROOT
וַיָּרֶב
wayyāreḇ
GROWS FROM
ריב
To contend, strive, or enter into dispute.
“strove” in this verse is wayyāreḇ. English “chode” can sound like a passing outburst, while ריב names contention as a dispute that can keep taking shape. The same root appears in the name Meribah, making the quarrel part of what the scene is remembered for.
ALSO GROWS
merivah: Strife, quarrel
מְרִיבָה
The same root turns an act of contention into a word for ongoing conflict, showing how a complaint can become defining.
riv: Dispute, controversy
רִיב
This noun frames contention as a dispute between parties; the people’s speech places them and Moses on opposite sides.
THE PATTERN
Distress can turn into a quarrel that hardens into a repeated test of the relationship between a people and God.
Therefore the people strove with Moses, and said, Give us waters that we may drink. And Moses said to them, Why do you strive with me? Why do you test the LORD?Do not stiffen your heart, as at Meribah, the striving, as on the day of Massah, the testing place, in the wilderness.do not harden your hearts, as in the embittering, in the day of the testing in the wilderness,THE THREAD
These are the waters of Meribah, the waters of striving, because the children of Israel strove with the LORD, and he was set apart in them.The same root appears in “strove,” and the waters are named Meribah, “contention.” The conflict reaches beyond the person nearest: the verse names it as contention before the LORD.
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