What Does Deuteronomy 5:3 Mean?
The LORD did not cut this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us living here this day.
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 LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.THE KEY
The Hebrew says the LORD “cut” the covenant with the living “us,” making its bond a present act among those alive today.
THE MEANING
You are addressed as a living participant in the covenant, not as a spectator to someone else’s bond. The repeated “with us” places its claim among the people alive today.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The covenant belongs only to the generation that first received it.
THE ROOT
כָּרַת
karat
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
To cut; to cut off.
“did not cut” in this verse is karat. The verb translated “made” is literally “cut,” in the Hebrew idiom for making a covenant. The bond is pictured as an enacted act with the people who are alive here today.
ALSO GROWS
karat: To cut; used in the expression “cut a covenant.”
כָּרַת
This is the verb translated “made” here, so the covenant is pictured as an enacted bond with those alive today.
hikhrit: To cut off, remove, or destroy.
הִכְרִית
The same root can name severing, showing the concrete force of cutting that remains beneath the covenant idiom.
keritut: Divorce or dismissal; a document of separation.
כְּרִיתוּת
This branch makes the root’s sense of severance visible alongside its use for a bond enacted with the present “us.”
חַיִּים
chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
chayah
To live; to be alive.
“Alive” belongs to the same root family as living and life. The word marks more than when the people are addressed: it names those present to receive the covenant as living participants.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living; alive.
חַי
This form shares the root behind “alive,” tying the people’s present condition to the language of living.
chayyah: A living creature.
חַיָּה
This branch extends the same root from being alive to a living being, keeping the verse’s emphasis on actual living people.
THE PATTERN
Covenant is an enacted bond that names people as its present participants.
And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the LORD has cut with you concerning all these words.But this is the covenant I will cut with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will set my instruction within them, and write it upon their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.Likewise also the cup after the meal, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you.THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.The same Hebrew verb translated “made” is the verb for “cut” in both verses. Genesis exposes the concrete action beneath the word; Deuteronomy applies that action to the living “us” here today.
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