What Does Numbers 23:20 Mean?
Behold, I have taken a command to bless, and he has blessed, and I cannot turn it back.
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
Behold, I have received commandment to bless: and he hath blessed; and I cannot reverse it.THE KEY
The Hebrew says the blessing cannot be made to turn back: it has gone beyond the speaker’s power to recall.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment you fear that a blessing can be taken back. What God has blessed is not turned back by a human voice; the word has left the speaker’s control.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that a human voice can revoke what God has already blessed.
THE ROOT
בָּרֵךְ
barēkh
GROWS FROM
ברך
To bless; to bestow blessing.
“bless” in this verse is barēkh. The word family holds blessing beside the knee and the blessed state, giving the word a bodily image of bending and receiving. Here blessing is something received and voiced; the verse’s next root says it cannot be turned back.
ALSO GROWS
berakhah: Blessing
בְּרָכָה
The blessing is already received and spoken, not merely wished for.
berekh: Knee
בֶּרֶךְ
The shared consonants bring the bodily image of bending into the word family of blessing.
barukh: Blessed
בָּרוּךְ
The blessed state is another branch of the same root that names the act of blessing.
אֲשִׁיבֶנָּה
ashivennah
GROWS FROM
שׁוב
To return or turn back.
“turn it back” in this verse is ashivennah. The English “reverse” can sound like canceling a decision; the Hebrew pictures turning the blessing back. That makes the claim vivid: what has gone forward cannot be returned to its unspoken state.
ALSO GROWS
yashuv: He or it will return
יָשׁוּב
Isaiah uses this form for the word that goes out and does not return empty.
teshuvah: Return; turning back
תְּשׁוּבָה
This branch makes the root’s motion clear: reversal is a turning back.
THE PATTERN
What God releases as a word or gift is not made void by a human attempt to withdraw it.
My covenant I will not breach, nor change the going out of my lips.So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.For the favors and the calling of God are not taken back.THE THREAD
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.Numbers uses ashi’vennah, “turn it back”; Isaiah says the word that goes out will not yashuv, “return,” void. The shared root שׁוב shows speech as movement: God’s released word is not recalled as though it had never been sent.
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