What Does Numbers 28:16 Mean?

And on the fourteenth day of the first new moon is the passing over of the LORD.

Numbers 28:16 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

And in the fourteenth day of the first month is the passover of the LORD.

THE KEY

Passover names deliverance as the LORD passing over danger to preserve life.

THE MEANING

The LORD’s Passover stands at a marked place in the cycle of time, keeping deliverance present. Its name speaks of protection that carries life through danger, from constriction toward release.

THE ROOT

פֶּסַח

pesach

GROWS FROM

פסח

p-s-ḥ

To pass over or leap over; in the Passover texts, to spare and preserve.

English gives the festival a name, but the Hebrew keeps the action inside it: pesach is bound to pasach, the act of passing over. The name therefore carries a movement of deliverance through danger, toward release.

ALSO GROWS

pasach: To pass over; in the Passover account, to spare.

פָּסַח

This verb names the preserving action that the festival noun recalls.

pesach: Passover; the appointed observance.

פֶּסַח

The observance carries the same root as the act of passing over, joining remembrance to deliverance.

THE PATTERN

The LORD’s deliverance is pictured as preserving life through danger and made present through the Passover.

And the blood will be a mark for you upon the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will leap over you, and the blow will not be upon you to ruin you when I strike down the land of Egypt.

Exodus 12:13 · SDVThe verb “pass over” uses the same root as pesach, making the festival’s name and the act of preservation one movement.

As hovering birds, so the LORD of hosts will cover Jerusalem. Covering, he will snatch it free, and leaping over it, he will bring it out of harm.

Isaiah 31:5 · SDVThe LORD’s passing over is directly paired with preserving, revealing the protective action carried in the name Passover.

Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened. For even the Anointed One, our Passover, was slaughtered for us.

1 Corinthians 5:7 · SDVThe anointed one is called the Passover, connecting deliverance with the very name of the observance.

THE THREAD

As hovering birds, so the LORD of hosts will cover Jerusalem. Covering, he will snatch it free, and leaping over it, he will bring it out of harm.

Isaiah 31:5 · SDV

Numbers names the day pesach; Isaiah uses the related verb pasach for the LORD’s act of preserving. The shared root reveals that the festival’s name holds the action itself: passing over to preserve.

This reading is from Selah Verse.

You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.

Get Selah Verse

A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.

Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us