What Does Deuteronomy 5:18 Mean?
Nor shall you commit adultery.
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 shalt thou commit adultery.THE KEY
Adultery is named as a breach of an intimate bond, not merely a private desire.
THE MEANING
This command places a clear boundary around intimate fidelity in the reader’s life now. Adultery is named as a breach of a real bond, not an abstract lapse.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a private sexual betrayal leaves the bond untouched.
THE ROOT
תִּנְאָף
tin'af
GROWS FROM
נ־א־ף
To commit adultery; sexual betrayal within a marriage bond.
The verb תִּנְאָף (tin’af, commit adultery) comes from נָאַף (na’af, commit adultery), whose related forms name both the act and the person who commits it. The root stays specific to sexual betrayal, keeping the command’s focus on a concrete breach of intimacy rather than generic disloyalty.
ALSO GROWS
no'ef: Adulterer; one who commits adultery.
נֹאֵף
The same root names the person who enacts the act forbidden here.
ni'uf: Adultery; the act of sexual betrayal.
נִאֻף
This noun carries the same specific breach as the command’s verb.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats sexual fidelity as a boundary that protects the truth of intimate bonds.
You shall not commit adultery.Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks heart; he who does it ruins his own living soul.You have heard that it was said to those of old, You shall not commit adultery.THE THREAD
Whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks heart; he who does it ruins his own living soul.The word “committeth adultery” in Proverbs shares the root נ־א־ף (na’af, commit adultery) with the command in Deuteronomy. Proverbs opens the command further by showing betrayal’s harm reaching into the betrayer’s own life.
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