What Does Numbers 31:15 Mean?
And Moses said to them, Have you kept all the women alive?
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 said unto them, Have ye saved all the women alive?THE KEY
Here, “saved” means “kept alive,” and the next command exposes the violence that decides whose life is preserved.
THE MEANING
This question puts the survival of every female under examination. Its verb means “cause to live” or “keep alive”; the next command separates women who are killed from girls who are kept alive. The word names survival, while the surrounding speech shows who is granted it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being called “saved” does not by itself mean being safe: here it means kept alive, and the next command limits who remains alive.
THE ROOT
הַחִיִּיתֶם
haḥiyyîtem
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live; in the Hiphil form here, to cause to live or keep alive.
הַחִיִּיתֶם (haḥiyyîtem) comes from חיה (ḥ-y-h), “to live,” in a causative form: “have you caused to live?”, kept alive. Numbers 31:17 makes the violence around that life-language explicit: some females are ordered killed, while only the young virgins are kept alive.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Living, alive.
חַי
The adjective names the state this verb causally produces: being alive.
ḥayyim: Life, living.
חַיִּים
The same root names life itself, tying the verb to the concrete fact of continued life.
vatteḥayyenā: They kept alive.
וַתְּחַיֶּיןָ
This form appears in Exodus 1:17, where the midwives keep the Hebrew boys alive despite the king’s death order.
מֹשֶׁה
Moshe
GROWS FROM
משה
m-sh-h
To draw out, especially from water.
Moses’ name, מֹשֶׁה (Moshe), is tied to מָשָׁה (mashah), “to draw out,” echoing his being drawn from the waters. That name carries an image of life preserved, while the words in this verse leave their violence intact.
ALSO GROWS
Moshe: Moses; named in connection with being drawn out.
מֹשֶׁה
His name holds the story of his being drawn out of the water within it.
meshithihu: I drew him out.
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
In Exodus 2:10, Pharaoh’s daughter uses this form when she explains the name Moses.
THE PATTERN
A life-word alone does not show whether life is preserved universally or selectively; the surrounding words reveal the boundary.
But the midwives stood in awe of God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but kept the boys alive.But from the cities of these peoples, which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall keep alive nothing with breath.Whoever seeks to hold on to his living soul will lose it, and whoever loses his living soul will bring it to life.THE THREAD
But the midwives stood in awe of God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but kept the boys alive.The phrase “saved ... alive” uses the same חיה (ḥ-y-h), “to live,” root as Moses’ question. In Exodus the causative life-verb names resistance to a death order; here it sits beside a command that sorts women for death or survival.
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