What Does Deuteronomy 29:14 Mean?
Not with you alone do I cut this covenant and this oath.
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
Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath;THE KEY
The covenant is spoken to you without being confined to you.
THE MEANING
The covenant and oath address you, but their reach does not stop with you. They extend beyond the people gathered here, so who is present now does not set the boundary of the covenant.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that the covenant belongs only to the people physically present when it is spoken.
THE ROOT
כֹּרֵת בְּרִית
kōrēt berit
GROWS FROM
כרת
to cut, cut down, or cut off
“cut” in this verse is kōrēt berit. The Hebrew phrase for “make a covenant” uses the verb for cutting, keeping the covenant tied to a concrete act. That language sits beside a wider claim: this oath is not confined to those physically present.
ALSO GROWS
karat: to cut or cut down
כָּרַת
The verb beneath “make” retains the image of a decisive action beneath the covenant phrase.
karat berit: to cut a covenant
כָּרַת בְּרִית
This Hebrew expression shows that covenant-making is spoken of as a cutting, a binding act whose reach the verse then extends beyond the gathered people.
THE PATTERN
A covenant’s reach can extend beyond the people who are present when it is spoken.
And I will make my covenant stand between me and you, and your seed after you in their generations, for a covenant of the ages, to be God to you and to your seed after you.For this is the covenant that I will set in place with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will give my instructions into their minds, and scratch them upon their hearts. And I will be to them a God, and they will be to me a people.THE THREAD
But with the one who stands here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with the one who is not here with us this day.The next verse names the people beyond the gathering: those who are not present that day. It opens “not with you only” into a covenant whose reach includes the absent.
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