What Does Deuteronomy 5:19 Mean?
Nor shall you steal.
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 steal.THE KEY
The hidden act, the thief, and the theft all grow from one root: what belongs to another does not vanish just because it is taken unseen.
THE MEANING
This command marks another person’s good as still theirs, even when its taking can be concealed. The Hebrew root spans the act, the thief, and the theft, showing that secrecy does not erase the taking. The boundary protects shared life from quiet seizure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
If no one sees the taking, it does not count as harm.
THE ROOT
גָּנַב
ganav
GROWS FROM
גנב
to steal or take secretly
“steal” in this verse is ganav. The same root names the act, the person who takes, and the theft itself. English separates these into different words, while Hebrew keeps them visibly connected: the hidden taking and the thief belong to one pattern.
ALSO GROWS
gannav: A person who steals
גַּנָּב
The command names an act that also gives a name to the one who performs it; the taking is not detached from its doer.
genevah: The act or thing stolen
גְּנֵבָה
The root connects the act of stealing with the resulting theft, keeping the taken good within the story rather than making it disappear.
THE PATTERN
Shared life is protected when another person’s good remains theirs, even when taking it could be concealed.
You shall not steal.Let the one who steals steal no longer, but rather let him toil, working the good thing with his own hands, that he may have something to share with the one who has need.THE THREAD
If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and slaughter it, or sell it; he shall make whole five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep.The Hebrew verb for “shall steal” comes from the same root, גנב (ganav, to steal), as the command here. This verse makes the taking visible through its cost and the restoration required; what is taken does not simply disappear from the shared life.
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