What Does Deuteronomy 17:13 Mean?
And all the people shall hear and respond, and fear, and no longer act in a boiling over.
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 all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously.THE KEY
Here, hearing is the first step in a chain: the whole community hears the judgment, fears, and stops repeating the defiance.
THE MEANING
The whole community hears the consequence of defying the ruling and feels fear; the sentence immediately before this verse is death. The verse shows that a public judgment reaches beyond the person who acts presumptuously and interrupts repetition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that defiance affects only the person who acts: its consequences reach the whole community.
THE ROOT
יִשְׁמְעוּ
yishme'u
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, heed, or respond.
“hear and respond” in this verse is yishme'u. The root holds hearing and response together. In this verse, the people do not merely receive information: what they hear changes what the community does next.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear; heed and respond.
שְׁמַע
This branch makes the verse’s hearing active: the warning is taken in and answered by restraint.
shemu'ah: A report or something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
The judgment becomes a report the people hear, carrying its consequence through the community.
יְזִידוּן
yezidun
GROWS FROM
זוד
To act arrogantly or presumptuously; the root also carries the sense of boiling or seething.
“act in a boiling over” in this verse is yezidun. Presumptuous action carries the image of a will boiling over its boundary. The verse says that this defiance does not continue after the people hear the judgment.
ALSO GROWS
zed: An arrogant or insolent person.
זֵד
This names the kind of self-assertion that the verse says the community will no longer repeat.
zadon: Arrogance or presumption.
זָדוֹן
This noun shows that the root describes a posture of defiance, not merely an accidental mistake.
וְיִרָאוּ
veyira'u
GROWS FROM
ירא
To fear or stand in awe; here, fear in response to danger and judgment.
The verse names fear plainly: the community hears the consequence and is afraid. That fear sits between hearing and the cessation of further presumption.
ALSO GROWS
yir'ah: Fear or awe.
יִרְאָה
This noun names the response the verse places after the community hears.
yare: One who fears; fearful.
יָרֵא
This form shows fear as a state of the people, not an abstract idea.
THE PATTERN
When defiance receives a public judgment, the community hears, fears, and stops repeating it.
And all Israel shall hear and respond, and shall tremble, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this among you.And those who remain shall hear and respond, and fear, and shall not add again to do any such evil within you.And great fear came upon the whole assembly, and upon all who heard these things.THE THREAD
And those who remain shall hear and respond, and fear, and shall not add again to do any such evil within you.Its “shall hear” repeats the root שמע (shama, hear and respond) and closely echoes this verse’s sequence of hearing, fear, and stopping. The shared root makes hearing part of the change in communal conduct.
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