What Does Numbers 35:16 Mean?
And if he strikes him with an implement of iron, so that he dies, he is a crusher; the crusher shall surely be put to death.
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 if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death.THE KEY
The victim’s death and the killer’s sentence share the Hebrew root מוּת (mût, to die), binding the fatal act to its consequence.
THE MEANING
An iron instrument strikes a person and death follows; the verse names the responsible striker as a murderer and states death as the sentence. The same death-root first marks what happens to the victim and then names what is imposed on the murderer, so neither the fatal act nor its consequence is blurred.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A fatal killing can be treated as an event with no accountable agent; this verse names the striker as a murderer and states the consequence.
THE ROOT
מוֹת יוּמָת
môt yûmāt
GROWS FROM
מות
to die; death
The victim’s death is stated with וַיָּמֹת (wayyāmot, and he dies); the sentence uses מוֹת יוּמָת (môt yûmāt, he shall surely be put to death), an emphatic infinitive paired with a passive verb. The repeated seed binds the death that happens to the judgment imposed.
ALSO GROWS
māvet: death
מָוֶת
This noun names what וַיָּמֹת (wayyāmot, and he dies) enacts in the victim clause.
mēt: dead; a dead person
מֵת
The same root names the state that follows the act of dying.
רֹצֵחַ
rōtsēaḥ
GROWS FROM
רצח
to murder; to slay
“crusher” in this verse is rōtsēaḥ. The verse does not leave the death as an event without an agent: רֹצֵחַ (rōtsēaḥ, murderer) names the person by the act’s category. This keeps the fatal blow and its legal consequence attached to the one who strikes.
ALSO GROWS
rāṣaḥ: to murder; to slay
רָצַח
The verb names the act from which the verse’s label for the responsible person is formed.
rōtsēaḥ: murderer
רֹצֵחַ
This form names the actor as responsible for the killing.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names the taking of life as an accountable act and states its consequence plainly.
Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.He who strikes a man so that he dies is surely put to death.For if I am acting out of alignment, and have done anything equal in weight to death, I do not turn aside from dying; but if there is none of these things of which these accuse me, no one may hand me over to them as a favor. I call upon Caesar.THE THREAD
Whoever strikes a living soul, the crusher shall be put to death by the mouth of witnesses; but one witness shall not answer against any person to make him die.Numbers 35:30 repeats רֹצֵחַ (rōtsēaḥ, murderer), the same form used in this verse. The iron strike identifies what the law calls murder; the connected verse adds that the death sentence depends on the testimony of witnesses.
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