What Does Deuteronomy 5:21 Mean?
Nor shall you desire your neighbor's wife. Nor shall you crave your neighbor's house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
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 desire thy neighbour’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour’s.THE KEY
The verse draws its boundary before the hand moves: desire can turn a neighbor’s whole life into a collection of things for oneself.
THE MEANING
The command reaches into the moment before possession: desire can make another person’s wife, home, field, work, and livelihood seem like things for the self. Its list, from wife to house, field, servants, animals, and “any thing”, draws one boundary around the neighbor’s whole life. The reader encounters that line at the level of regard, before anything changes hands.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie undone is that coveting is harmless until the hand takes what belongs to someone else; the verse places the boundary at the desire that has already made the neighbor’s good an object for oneself.
THE ROOT
תַחְמֹד
taḥmōd
GROWS FROM
חמד
To desire, take pleasure in, or regard as desirable.
“desire” in this verse is taḥmōd. The root family reaches from the inward pull toward a thing to the thing as prized. The command locates its boundary where another’s good becomes desirable as one’s own.
ALSO GROWS
neḥmād: Desirable, delightful.
נֶחְמָד
In Genesis 3:6, the tree is called desirable before it is taken; the same root shows how seeing another’s good as desirable can precede action.
maḥmād: A desirable or precious thing.
מַחְמָד
This form names something prized, illuminating how desire can reduce what belongs to a neighbor to an object of longing.
תִתְאַוֶּה
tit’avveh
GROWS FROM
אוה
To long for or desire.
“crave” in this verse is tit’avveh. The second verb turns attention from a neighbor’s wife to the house and everything belonging to the neighbor. Its root also names desire as an appetite, showing how the list can become a field of craving rather than a view of another person’s life.
ALSO GROWS
ta’avāh: Desire, longing, appetite.
תַּאֲוָה
This noun from the same root makes the craving explicit; here the command reaches the appetite directed toward what belongs to a neighbor.
hit’avvāh: To long for, crave.
הִתְאַוָּה
This verbal form from the same root describes the movement of craving itself, matching the verse’s attention to desire before taking.
THE PATTERN
Coveting can turn what is seen into something to take, revealing how desire can precede possession.
And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating, and that it was a craving for the eyes, and a tree to be desired for making one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.They covet fields and tear them away, and houses, and carry them off. So they press a man and his house, even a man and his inheritance.But each one is tested by his own craving, dragged out and lured.THE THREAD
And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating, and that it was a craving for the eyes, and a tree to be desired for making one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.“To be desired” is נֶחְמָד (neḥmād, desirable), from the same root חמד (ḥ-m-d, desire) as the first verb in this verse. Genesis places that root between seeing and taking; Deuteronomy applies its boundary to what belongs to a neighbor.
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