What Does Numbers 32:5 Mean?
So they said, If we have found favor in your eyes, let this land be given to your servants for a holding, and do not make us cross over the Jordan.
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
Wherefore, said they, if we have found grace in thy sight, let this land be given unto thy servants for a possession, and bring us not over Jordan.THE KEY
The request frames possession as land given to be held and gives the refusal to cross the Jordan equal weight with the land requested.
THE MEANING
Favor can take concrete form as a place to hold, and the request names a boundary along with what is received. Here, the land is for the servants, without crossing the Jordan.
THE ROOT
אֲחֻזָּה
achuzzah
GROWS FROM
אחז
to grasp, seize, or hold
The word for possession grows from a root of grasping and holding. The land is named as what the servants will hold, while the final clause marks the Jordan as the edge they do not pass.
ALSO GROWS
achaz: to grasp, seize, or hold
אָחַז
This verb makes the physical sense inside “possession” audible: something held.
achuzzah: possession, holding
אֲחֻזָּה
This is the noun used for the land they ask to receive and hold.
יֻתַּן
yuttan from nathan
GROWS FROM
נתן
to give, set, or place
The verb is passive: let the land be given. Its root carries the action of giving or placing, so the request presents possession as something received and then held.
ALSO GROWS
nathan: to give, set, or place
נָתַן
The root names the act by which the land comes to the servants.
mattanah: gift
מַתָּנָה
This noun from the same root echoes the land as something given.
THE PATTERN
An inheritance becomes tangible as an assigned portion of land to possess.
And I will give you, and your seed after you, the land where you lodge as a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for a holding of the ages; and I will be their God.The cords fall to me in sweet places; indeed, my inheritance is beautiful.Flourishing are the bowed, for they inherit the earth.THE THREAD
And I will give you, and your seed after you, the land where you lodge as a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for a holding of the ages; and I will be their God.The same roots for “give” (נתן, nathan) and “hold” (אחז, achaz) shape both verses: the land is given as a possession. Numbers narrows that shared inheritance to a request with a boundary: the land is held without crossing the Jordan.
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.
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