What Does Numbers 26:14 Mean?
These are the families of the Simeonites, twenty and two thousand and two hundred.
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
These are the families of the Simeonites, twenty and two thousand and two hundred.THE KEY
The count names Simeon’s descendants with a name rooted in hearing, so the family roll carries the trace of being heard.
THE MEANING
Here, belonging appears as both a named family and a number. “Simeonite” carries the hearing-root within that identity: the counted people bear a name shaped by being heard.
THE ROOT
שִׁמְעֹנִי
Shim‘oni
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen, heed
“Simeonites” in this verse is Shim‘oni. The name Simeon grows from שמע, “hear.” The same root appears in words for hearing and for a report that has been heard, so the census preserves a family name whose seed is hearing.
ALSO GROWS
shama: To hear, listen, or heed
שָׁמַע
This verb is the seed behind Simeon’s name and the hearing carried in the family label.
shemuah: A report or news; something heard
שְׁמוּעָה
The root can carry hearing into a message that becomes known, linking the act of hearing to what is received and remembered.
THE PATTERN
What is heard is carried forward, in a name, a remembered cry, or an answered prayer.
And she conceived again, and bore a son, and she said, Because the LORD has heard that I was hated, he has therefore given me this son also. And she called his name Simeon, Heard.And God heard and responded to their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.And said, Cornelius, your prayer has been heard, and your acts of compassion have been remembered before the eyes of God.THE THREAD
And she conceived again, and bore a son, and she said, Because the LORD has heard that I was hated, he has therefore given me this son also. And she called his name Simeon, Heard.Leah names Simeon because the LORD has heard her; the name carries the root שמע, “hear.” Numbers 26:14 gathers his descendants under that same name, so the family count still bears the sound of hearing.
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