What Does Deuteronomy 25:14 Mean?

You shall not have in your house a measure and a measure, a great and a small.

Deuteronomy 25:14 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small.

THE KEY

Hebrew repeats ⁨אֵיפָה⁩ (ephah, a measure): the same named unit becomes two standards when one is made great and the other small.

THE MEANING

The measure in your house can keep one name while taking two sizes. What appears to be one standard changes with the exchange.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

Using the same label for both measures makes them fair.

THE ROOT

גְּדוֹלָה

gedolah

GROWS FROM

גדל

gadal

To grow or become great.

Here “great” is the measure made to grow; the paired “small” is the measure reduced. The two size roots expose how the same named ephah can be enlarged or diminished while its identity stays constant.

ALSO GROWS

gadal: To grow or become great.

גָּדַל

It shows “great” as a change in size, not a different kind of measure.

gedullah: Greatness or majesty.

גְּדֻלָּה

This noun carries the same sense of greatness expressed here as a larger measure.

קְטַנָּה

qetannah

GROWS FROM

קטן

qatan

To be small or become little.

“small” in this verse is qetannah. This root can describe both smallness and becoming diminished. Beside the root for “great,” it reveals two opposing adjustments made to what is still called the same measure.

ALSO GROWS

qatan: To become small or be diminished.

קָטַן

It makes the reduction of the measure an action, rather than a separate unit.

qaton: Small or little.

קָטֹן

This adjective shares the verse’s sense of a measure reduced in size.

THE PATTERN

Justice is tested by whether a standard stays consistent across different people and exchanges.

Stone and another stone, measure and another measure, both alike are what the LORD recoils from.

Proverbs 20:10 · SDVThe verse names unequal standards themselves as corrupt, even when the weights or measures appear ordinary.

Are there still storehouses of wickedness in the house of the wicked, and the lean measure that seethes? Shall I declare them clean with wicked scales, and with a bag of deceitful stones?

Micah 6:10-11 · SDVThe scant measure in the house exposes how private gain can hide inside a familiar unit.

For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with what measure you measure, it will be measured to you.

Matthew 7:2 · SDVThe measure one applies returns as the standard by which one is measured.

THE THREAD

But you shall have a whole and aligned stone, and a whole and aligned measure, that your days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD your God gives you.

Deuteronomy 25:15 · SDV

Verse 15 answers the repeated measure with an ephah called ⁨שְׁלֵמָה⁩ (shelemah, whole or complete) and just. ⁨שְׁלֵמָה⁩ (shelemah, whole or complete) comes from ⁨שׁלם⁩ (sh-l-m, to be whole), the root also seen in ⁨שָׁלוֹם⁩ (shalom, wholeness): the just standard is pictured as undivided.

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