What Does Numbers 23:24 Mean?
Behold, a people rises like a lioness, and lifts itself like a young lion. It does not lie down until it eats what it has torn, and drinks the blood of the pierced.
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, the people shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion: he shall not lie down until he eat of the prey, and drink the blood of the slain.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “prey” carries the tearing of the kill inside it: the people rise like lions and stay awake until that violence is complete.
THE MEANING
The people rise with the force of a lion and do not lie down before prey is eaten and the blood of the slain is drunk. The image holds their power as predatory and bloodied, carrying the rising all the way through the kill.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that this lion-like power is only a noble image of courage: its own sentence carries the image through to prey and blood.
THE ROOT
טֶרֶף
ṭereph
GROWS FROM
טרף
Tear, seize, or tear apart.
“what it has torn” in this verse is ṭereph. The word translated “prey” is טֶרֶף (ṭereph), prey or food taken by tearing. The verse’s eating and blood are already bound into the image of the kill.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāraph: To tear apart or seize as prey.
טָרַף
The action inside the root makes the people’s lion-like image bodily and violent.
ṭereph: Prey; food taken by tearing.
טֶרֶף
This is the word used for “prey” here, joining the lion’s rise to the violence that follows.
יָקוּם
yāqūm
GROWS FROM
קום
Rise or stand; come into a standing position.
The verb translated “rise up” shares its root with words for standing and establishing. Its movement is a people coming into a forceful stance, echoed by the next verb’s image of lifting.
ALSO GROWS
qûm: To rise or stand.
קוּם
The verse uses this root for the people’s rising as a lion.
hēqîm: To raise up or establish.
הֵקִים
This form shows that the root’s movement can also carry the sense of bringing something into a firm standing.
THE PATTERN
Lion imagery makes power visible as a force that rises or holds its ground, and in the prey passages that force continues through the kill.
Judah is a lion's cub. From what was torn, my son, you have gone up. He folded at the knee, he crouched like a lion, and like a lioness; who shall raise him up?For thus the LORD has spoken to me, as the lion growls and the young lion over his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called out against him, he is not shattered by their voice, nor bent low by their noise. So the LORD of hosts will come down to fight for Mount Zion and for its hill.And one of the older ones says to me, Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome to open the scroll and to untie its seven seals.THE THREAD
For thus the LORD has spoken to me, as the lion growls and the young lion over his prey, when a multitude of shepherds is called out against him, he is not shattered by their voice, nor bent low by their noise. So the LORD of hosts will come down to fight for Mount Zion and for its hill.In Hebrew, “prey” here is טֶרֶף (ṭereph), from the same root, טרף, as the prey in Numbers. Isaiah shows the lion refusing to yield over its prey under threat; Numbers carries the image through to eating and drinking blood.
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