What Does Deuteronomy 4:18 Mean?
The likeness of any thing that crawls upon the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth.
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
The likeness of any thing that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters beneath the earth:THE KEY
The word for “likeness” is itself a built form: the verse exposes how a human-made image can turn a living creature into a stand-in for the unpictured divine.
THE MEANING
A ground-creature and a fish remain creatures; neither can contain the divine. The verse holds open the difference between the One heard without a visible form and any likeness fashioned from what lives.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that giving the divine a visible, familiar form makes that form able to hold or secure the divine presence.
THE ROOT
תַּבְנִית
tabnith
GROWS FROM
ב־נ־ה
build, construct
The word translated “likeness” names a built form or pattern; its seed is the verb “to build.” Here, the warning is about a made form being treated as a stand-in for what cannot be captured in a form.
ALSO GROWS
mivneh: structure, building
מִבְנֶה
This word names a formed structure, making the built quality inside tabnith visible.
binyan: building, construction
בִּנְיָן
This branch keeps “likeness” connected to the act and result of constructing a form.
רֶמֶשׂ
remes
GROWS FROM
ר־מ־שׂ
move, creep
“crawls” in this verse is remes. The Hebrew word names a moving creature, from a root of movement; the English clause makes the movement sound like a separate action. The verse names a living being among the forms that must not be made into an image of the divine.
ALSO GROWS
ramash: to move, creep
רָמַשׂ
The verb carries the movement that the noun remes names in a creature.
romes: one that moves or creeps
רֹמֵשׂ
This participle keeps the creature defined by its living movement, not by a fixed likeness.
אֲדָמָה
adamah
GROWS FROM
א־ד־ם
be red; the root family names reddish ground and the human
The ground here is adamah, in the same consonant family as adam, the human, and adom, red. The verse places the human and the crawling creature in an earth-linked world of living forms, none of which can stand in for the unpictured divine.
ALSO GROWS
adam: human being
אָדָם
The shared consonants link the human to the ground where the creature moves.
adom: red
אָדֹם
This branch preserves the root’s association with the reddish earth named by adamah.
THE PATTERN
A made likeness cannot contain the unpictured divine; living forms remain creatures, not measures of God.
You shall not make for yourself a hewn image, or any shape of anything that is in the heavens above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth.To whom then will you liken God? What likeness will you set in line beside him?Since then we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think the divine is like gold, or silver, or stone, carved by craft and by human imagining.THE THREAD
According to all that I show you, the form of the dwelling and the form of all its vessels, so you make it.The Hebrew תַּבְנִית (tabnith, “pattern” or “likeness”) also names the pattern of the tabernacle. The shared word shows that the issue is not form alone: here a pattern is received for a dwelling, while Deuteronomy warns against making a creature’s likeness a stand-in for God.
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