What Does Deuteronomy 16:14 Mean?
And you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow within your gates.
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 thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates.THE KEY
The verse makes joy a shared feast by naming the people a household could most easily leave at its edges.
THE MEANING
This verse places rejoicing across the whole household and community: children, servants, the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. The feast’s joy reaches every person within the gates, including those with less standing and security. Joy here is held in common.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that celebration belongs to the host and those with status, while servants and vulnerable neighbors remain spectators.
THE ROOT
וְשָׂמַחְתָּ
vesamachta
GROWS FROM
שמח
samach
to rejoice, be glad
“rejoice” in this verse is vesamachta. The verb belongs to the same word-family as the Hebrew noun for joy. By naming the household and its vulnerable neighbors in the same breath, the verse presents their joy as part of one shared celebration.
ALSO GROWS
simchah: joy, gladness
שִׂמְחָה
The noun for joy comes from the same root as the command to rejoice, joining the act of celebration to the joy it holds.
sameach: glad, joyful
שָׂמֵחַ
This word describes a joyful person from the same root, keeping the verse’s rejoicing connected to a shared state of gladness.
חַג
chag
GROWS FROM
חגג
chagag
to celebrate or keep a festival
The feast is a chag, from the word-family of celebrating a festival. Its joy is tied to a shared observance, with every person named in the verse included as a participant.
ALSO GROWS
chag: feast, festival
חָג
This is the verse’s word for the feast, placing the rejoicing within a shared celebration.
chagigah: festal celebration or offering
חֲגִיגָה
This related word carries the festival root into its celebration, echoing the feast as a communal event.
הַגֵּר
hagger
GROWS FROM
גור
gur
to sojourn, dwell as an outsider
“stranger” in this verse is hagger. The ger is named as a sojourning resident, and the verse locates this person within the gates. The word holds outsider identity and dwelling in the same root, and both are included in the feast.
ALSO GROWS
ger: resident outsider, sojourner
גֵּר
This is the word used for the stranger included among those who rejoice.
megurim: sojournings, dwellings
מְגוּרִים
This related form connects the outsider to the place where one dwells, fitting the verse’s image of someone within the gates.
THE PATTERN
Joy becomes shared when a feast includes people across household rank and social vulnerability.
And you shall rejoice before the face of the LORD your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite within your gates, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are in your midst, in the place the LORD your God has chosen to settle his name there.But when you make a feast, call the emptied, the maimed, the lame, the blind.And they, holding fast day by day with one passion in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, took their food with gladness and singleness of heart.THE THREAD
Serve the LORD with gladness; come before his face with a ringing cry.The word translated “gladness” is שִׂמְחָה (simchah, joy), from the same root שמח (samach, rejoice) as “rejoice” in Deuteronomy. The shared root links the joy of this feast with gladness before the LORD as one word-family.
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