What Does Numbers 21:14 Mean?
Therefore it is said in the Book of the Wars of the LORD, What he did in the Red Sea, and in the streambeds of Arnon.
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
Wherefore it is said in the book of the wars of the LORD, What he did in the Red sea, and in the brooks of Arnon,THE KEY
What the LORD does becomes readable twice: in a book of wars and in the named waters carried into the account.
THE MEANING
This verse joins conflict, memory, and place: the LORD’s wars are recounted in a book and tied to waters named in the account. The reader meets testimony that can be located and told again.
THE ROOT
סֵפֶר
sefer
GROWS FROM
ספר
s-p-r
Count, recount, relate.
Sefer grows from the root ספר, which carries the sense of counting and recounting. Its branches show a book as a recountable witness: the LORD’s wars are held in words that can be told again.
ALSO GROWS
saphar: Count, recount, relate.
סָפַר
This verb makes the book’s record an act of telling what has happened.
sippur: A telling, story, or narrative.
סִפּוּר
This branch connects the written book with an account that can be carried forward in speech.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s acts amid conflict become testimony that can be preserved and told again.
And the LORD said to Moses, Write this as a memorial in a scroll, and set it into the ears of Joshua. For I will surely wipe out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens.We will not hide them from their children, recounting to the generation that follows the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonders that he has done.And they overcame him through the blood of the Lamb, and through the word of their witness, and they did not love their living souls, even unto death.THE THREAD
And the LORD said to Moses, Write this as a memorial in a scroll, and set it into the ears of Joshua. For I will surely wipe out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens.Both verses use סֵפֶר (sefer, book), from ספר (s-p-r), the root of counting and recounting. Numbers places the LORD’s wars in a book; Exodus makes the connection explicit by joining a written record to the act of rehearsing it aloud.
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