What Does Deuteronomy 20:18 Mean?
Lest they teach you to do like all their loathsome things, which they have done for their gods, and so you would miss the mark against the LORD your God.
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
That they teach you not to do after all their abominations, which they have done unto their gods; so should ye sin against the LORD your God.THE KEY
The verse makes annihilation the stated protection against learning another people’s practices.
THE MEANING
The verse treats teaching as a force that shapes what you practice, and what you practice as capable of placing you against the LORD your God. Its reason refers to the command just before it: no one who breathes is to remain in those cities, so their practices cannot be learned. The sentence joins protection from religious influence to total destruction; the violence is part of its claim.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that instruction is neutral: the verse treats learned practice as capable of redirecting allegiance.
THE ROOT
יְלַמְּדוּ
yelammedu
GROWS FROM
למד
lamad
To learn or be trained; in the causative form, to teach.
English separates teaching from learning, but both grow from למד (lamad, to learn or teach). Here, what another people teaches can become what you do. The verse places that risk alongside a command to annihilate those people, revealing the violence built into its stated protection.
ALSO GROWS
lamad: To learn or be taught.
לָמַד
The learner’s side of the same root shows that teaching aims at shaping what someone learns.
limmud: One who is taught or trained; a disciple.
לִמּוּד
This branch names a person by the formation they receive, making instruction a source of identity.
וַחֲטָאתֶם
vaḥata'tem
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥata
To miss, miss the mark, or go astray.
“miss the mark against” in this verse is vaḥata'tem. The phrase “sin against the LORD” carries the root’s sense of missing or going astray. The verse frames adopted practice as a miss in relation to God.
ALSO GROWS
chet: A miss or sin.
חֵטְא
This noun keeps the root’s concrete sense of missing inside the familiar English word “sin.”
chatta't: A sin or an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The same root-family names both the missing and an offering associated with it.
THE PATTERN
Repeated practices shape allegiance: what a person learns to do can become a way of turning from God.
Lest you be trained in his paths, and take a snare for your living soul.But they interwove among the nations, and trained in their works.Do not take the shape of this age, but be reshaped by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test what is the good, well-pleasing, and complete will of God.THE THREAD
But they interwove among the nations, and trained in their works.In Psalm 106:35, “learned” is לָמְדוּ (lamdu, they learned), from למד (lamad, to learn or teach), the same root as “teach” in Deuteronomy. The shared root connects the feared influence with its lived form: teaching and learning are two sides of the same formation.
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