What Does Deuteronomy 5:13 Mean?
Six days you shall serve, and do all your work.
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
Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:THE KEY
Work has a boundary: the verse gives it six days, not all of them.
THE MEANING
Your labor has a real place, and the verse names its span: six days for the work you do. Its boundary belongs to the rhythm of life, so work does not occupy every day.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that work has no limit: the verse counts its span as six days.
THE ROOT
תַּעֲבֹד
taʿavod
GROWS FROM
עבד
to serve; to work
The verb translated “labour” comes from עבד, a root that also means “serve.” The word holds work and service together: labor is not only activity, but service given a place within a larger rhythm.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: servant
עֶבֶד
The shared root links the labor of these six days with service.
ʿavodah: work; service
עֲבוֹדָה
This noun keeps the same two senses together, showing the service within the verse’s labor.
THE PATTERN
Work has an appointed place within a rhythm that also makes room for rest.
And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made, and he stopped on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall stop, that your ox and your donkey may settle, and the son of your handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.THE THREAD
And the LORD God took Adam and set him down in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to guard it.The Hebrew translated “to dress” comes from עבד, the same root as “labour” here. The root connects the garden work with service, revealing labor as care for what has been entrusted.
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