What Does Numbers 20:5 Mean?
And why have you made us come up out of Egypt, to bring us to this harmful place? It is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates, and there are no waters to drink.
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 wherefore have ye made us to come up out of Egypt, to bring us in unto this evil place? it is no place of seed, or of figs, or of vines, or of pomegranates; neither is there any water to drink.THE KEY
The ascent out of Mitzrayim’s narrowing sounds like harm when the place ahead offers no visible seed, fruit, or water.
THE MEANING
The voice meets a place without what sustains it and calls that place evil. Egypt is Mitzrayim (מִצְרַיִם, mitzrayim: “the two narrows”); here, the ascent out of constriction feels dangerous because the next place looks barren. The verse holds the strain between being brought out and not yet seeing what will sustain life.
THE ROOT
הֶעֱלִיתֻנוּ
heʿelitunu
GROWS FROM
עלה
ʿ-l-h
Rise or ascend; in the causative form, bring up.
“made us to come up” in this verse is heʿelitunu. The same root carries both the movement out of Egypt and the people’s accusation that they have been brought into a barren place. English separates the upward movement from the complaint, while Hebrew keeps them joined: the ascent itself is what now feels harmful.
ALSO GROWS
ʿalah: Rise, ascend, go up.
עָלָה
The root names the movement at the center of the complaint: being brought up from Egypt.
ʿolah: An ascending offering, commonly rendered burnt offering.
עֹלָה
This related word also carries the sense of going up, extending the root’s image of ascent beyond travel.
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
Sow or seed.
The word for seed can also mean offspring, so the complaint names more than a missing crop: it describes a place with no visible beginning for future growth. Beside the absent fruit and water, the missing seed makes the landscape feel unable to sustain what comes next.
ALSO GROWS
zaraʿ: Sow, plant seed.
זָרַע
The verb shows seed as the beginning of a harvest, the very prospect the speakers say this place lacks.
zeraʿ: Seed; offspring or descendants.
זֶרַע
The same word can point from what is planted now to what may grow after it, deepening the sense of a future that cannot be seen here.
THE PATTERN
When food and water are not visible, the mind measures the way ahead by its immediate capacity to sustain life.
And the children of Israel said to them, Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots and ate bread until we were filled. For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.And they spoke against God, and said, Can God lay out a table in the wilderness?So do not be pulled apart, saying, "What shall we eat?" Or, "What shall we drink?" Or, "With what shall we be wrapped?"THE THREAD
And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.“Bring them up” in Exodus 3:8 uses the same עלה (ʿ-l-h, “rise; bring up”) root as “made us to come up” here. Exodus names the destination as good and spacious; Numbers voices the ascent through the immediate absence of seed, fruit, and water. The shared verb holds the promised movement and the felt barrenness together.
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