What Does Deuteronomy 5:7 Mean?

You shall have no other gods before my face.

Deuteronomy 5:7 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Thou shalt have none other gods before me.

THE KEY

“Before me” carries the image of standing before God’s face: no other god occupies that presence.

THE MEANING

The reader’s life is lived before the LORD, and the verse gives that presence an exclusive center: no other god takes that place. Its claim reaches now as undivided allegiance.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that the LORD can be treated as one divine power among several.

THE ROOT

עַל־פָּנָי

ʿal pānāy

GROWS FROM

פנה

panah

To turn or face toward.

“before my face” in this verse is ʿal pānāy. The phrase literally pictures another god as standing before the LORD’s face, bringing the command into the space of presence. English “before” preserves the sense, while the Hebrew face-image makes that presence tangible.

ALSO GROWS

panim: Face; presence.

פָּנִים

The face is the concrete image at the center of “before me”: the command concerns what stands in the LORD’s presence.

lifnei: Before; in front of; in the presence of.

לִפְנֵי

This related form shows how the face-language also expresses being before someone, connecting spatial position with presence.

THE PATTERN

The LORD’s presence leaves no place for a rival god.

To you it was shown, that you might perceive that the LORD is God, and there is no other beside him.

Deuteronomy 4:35 · SDVThe verse states the same exclusive claim directly: there is no other beside the LORD.

I am the LORD, and there is none else; there is no God beside me. I gird you, though you have not known me.

Isaiah 45:5 · SDVThe LORD’s own declaration excludes every competing divine power.

But to us there is one God, the Father, out of whom are all things, and we into him, and one Lord, Jesus the Anointed One, through whom are all things, and we through him.

1 Corinthians 8:6 · SDVThe verse locates all things in relation to one God and one Lord, with no rival source beside them.

THE THREAD

You shall have no other gods before my face.

Exodus 20:3 · SDV

Exodus 20:3 repeats the same wording and face-presence image. Seeing that phrase across both tellings sharpens the claim: no rival god stands alongside the LORD.

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