What Does Numbers 34:28 Mean?
And the lifted one of the branch of the children of Naphtali, Pedahel the son of Ammihud.
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 the prince of the tribe of the children of Naphtali, Pedahel the son of Ammihud.THE KEY
The name of Naphtali’s appointed prince means “God has redeemed,” so the record of inheritance carries redemption in the name of its steward.
THE MEANING
The verse gives belonging a visible shape: Naphtali’s place is represented by a named prince. Pedahel’s name carries the sense “God has redeemed,” placing release within the name attached to this inheritance. The line holds a tribe’s allotted place and the language of redemption together.
THE ROOT
פְּדַהְאֵל
Pedahel
GROWS FROM
פדה
Redeem, ransom, release.
Pedahel joins פדה (padah, redeem or ransom) with אֵל (El, God), giving the name the sense “God has redeemed.” The verse places this language of release inside a record of inheritance: the person named at the head of Naphtali bears redemption in his name.
ALSO GROWS
pādâ: To redeem or ransom.
פָּדָה
This verb carries the root’s action directly and gives the first part of Pedahel’s name its sense of release.
pōdeh: One who redeems; redeeming.
פֹּדֶה
This participle keeps the root’s consonants and presents redemption as an active role, echoing the person named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
A whole becomes concrete as its distinct parts receive defined places within it.
And you shall take one lifted one from every branch, to place the land in holding.These are the inheritances, which Eleazar the priest, and Joshua the son of Nun, and the heads of the fathers of the tribes of the children of Israel, divided for an inheritance by lot in Shiloh before the face of the LORD, at the opening of the tent of meeting. So they finished dividing the land.But now God has set the limbs, each one of them, in the body, as he willed.THE THREAD
But God ransoms my living soul from the hand of the grave; he takes hold of me. Selah.The Hebrew word translated “redeem” here is יִפְדֶּה (yipdeh), from the same root פדה as Pedahel. The verse makes explicit the action compressed in the name: God is the one who redeems.
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