What Does Numbers 29:40 Mean?
And Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the LORD commanded Moses.
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
And Moses told the children of Israel according to all that the LORD commanded Moses.THE KEY
A human voice can carry the whole command without becoming its source.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you with a word that remains sourced in the LORD even as it reaches you through another person’s voice. “According to all” holds that voice to what was entrusted, carrying the message onward in its full measure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a message becomes the speaker’s possession once spoken: the LORD remains its source, and Moses carries it onward.
THE ROOT
צִוָּה
tsivvah
GROWS FROM
צוה
To direct, charge, or command.
“commanded” in this verse is tsivvah. The same seed forms both the command Moses receives and the commandment named in Hebrew. The verse keeps the direction of the word visible: it comes from the LORD and is carried by Moses.
ALSO GROWS
mitzvah: Commandment or charge.
מִצְוָה
It shows that the command Moses speaks belongs to a wider family of directed instruction.
tsav: A command or order.
צַו
This compact form shares the seed of “commanded,” keeping the sense of a directed charge close to the verse.
מֹשֶׁה
Mosheh
GROWS FROM
משה
To draw out; the Torah connects the name with being drawn out of water.
“Moses” in this verse is Mosheh. The Torah’s own name-play connects Mosheh with being drawn out of water. Here, the one named as drawn out stands between the received command and the people, carrying it into their hearing.
ALSO GROWS
mashah: To draw out.
מָשָׁה
This is the root associated with Moses’s name and its image of being drawn out of water.
meshitihu: I drew him out.
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This is the form used in the name explanation in Exodus 2:10, linking the name to the act of drawing out.
וַיֹּאמֶר
vayomer
GROWS FROM
אמר
To say or speak.
“spoke to” in this verse is vayomer. The Hebrew verb is “and he said.” It puts Moses’s spoken voice beside the command’s source, showing the message passing through speech without being presented as Moses’s own invention.
ALSO GROWS
omer: Speech or utterance.
אֹמֶר
It makes visible the spoken form through which the command reaches the people.
imrah: A saying or utterance.
אִמְרָה
It shares the seed of speech, underscoring that the command is carried aloud.
THE PATTERN
A message remains anchored in its source as it passes through a human voice.
And Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the LORD, and all the judgments, and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the LORD has said we will do.You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor shave anything away from it, that you may guard the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you.For I have not spoken from myself, but the Father who sent me has given me a command, what I should say and what I should speak.THE THREAD
And it came to pass in the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day of the month, that Moses spoke to the children of Israel, according to all that the LORD had commanded him for them.“Commandment” in this verse and “commanded” in Numbers share the Hebrew root צוה, meaning to direct or charge. Deuteronomy echoes the same pattern: the command comes from the LORD, passes through Moses, and reaches the people whole.
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