What Does Deuteronomy 17:11 Mean?
Upon the mouth of the instruction which they point out to you, and upon the judgment which they say to you, you shall do. You shall not turn aside from the word which they tell you, to the right hand or to the left.
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
According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach thee, and according to the judgment which they shall tell thee, thou shalt do: thou shalt not decline from the sentence which they shall shew thee, to the right hand, nor to the left.THE KEY
The instruction in this verse becomes visible as action: what is taught and judged becomes a direction you carry.
THE MEANING
Instruction reaches into your present life as something heard, weighed, and enacted; judgment does not remain speech but becomes a course of action. The image of neither right nor left presents fidelity as holding that course while moving through the choices before you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hearing or agreeing with an instruction is already the same as carrying it: here, the word finds expression in what is done.
THE ROOT
תּוֹרָה
torah
GROWS FROM
ירה
To cast or shoot; in the causative form, to point out, teach, or direct.
The root joins instruction with casting or directing toward a point, giving Torah the image of guidance that sets a course. Here, what is taught and judged is not inert text: it becomes visible in the action that follows.
ALSO GROWS
yarah: To cast, throw, or shoot.
יָרָה
The root’s concrete act of sending something toward a point gives instruction a directional image.
yoreh: He teaches or directs.
יוֹרֶה
This teaching form keeps the root’s three consonants, showing instruction as an act that points toward a course.
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; word or matter.
The word this verse says not to turn from can also mean a matter or affair. The root holds speech and what the speech concerns together, so the instruction is both something spoken and something to be enacted.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The verb for speaking shares the same three root consonants as the word for the ruling’s content.
devarim: Words or matters.
דְּבָרִים
This plural preserves the overlap between what is said and what is at issue.
תָּסוּר
tasur
GROWS FROM
סור
To turn aside or depart.
“turn aside” in this verse is tasur. The root holds a physical sense of turning or departing beneath the English ‘decline.’ Beside ‘right hand’ and ‘left,’ it pictures the instruction as a course from which one can veer.
ALSO GROWS
sur: Turn aside or depart.
סוּר
This form states the movement that the verse says not to make away from the given word.
yasur: He will turn aside.
יָסוּר
The same root describes a person’s movement away from a course, making the verse’s right-and-left image concrete.
THE PATTERN
Instruction is a course whose meaning becomes visible when it is carried into action without veering.
Therefore you shall guard to do as the LORD your God has commanded you. You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.Your word is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my path.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
Do not bend to the right or to the left; remove your foot from harm.The verb rendered ‘remove’ comes from the same root as ‘decline’ here, and Proverbs places it in the foot: turning aside is pictured as bodily movement. With right and left named in both passages, the instruction reads as a path held beneath the steps.
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