What Does Exodus 13:10 Mean?
And you shall guard this statute in its appointed time from day to 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
Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year to year.THE KEY
The verse makes keeping a form of guarding: what is appointed stays present through its return, year after year.
THE MEANING
This verse locates keeping in a recurring rhythm: the practice returns at its appointed time, year after year. What matters is carried into the present through a form that repeats, rather than left as a memory that fades.
THE ROOT
וְשָׁמַרְתָּ
ve-shamarta
GROWS FROM
שמר
shamar
Guard, watch over, keep.
“guard” in this verse is ve-shamarta. The word carries the sense of active guarding, not passive storage. Keeping the ordinance means tending it so it remains present across time.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: Keeper, guard
שֹׁמֵר
The keeper is one who watches over something; this makes the verse’s keeping an act of care.
mishmeret: Charge, guard, watch
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
A charge is something entrusted to be watched over, echoing the ordinance held through each recurring season.
לְמוֹעֲדָהּ
le-mo'adeha
GROWS FROM
יעד
ya'ad
Appoint, designate, set a time or meeting.
מוֹעֵד (mo’ed, appointed time or meeting) frames the year not as a vague cycle but as a time set for return. The recurrence has an appointment built into it.
ALSO GROWS
mo'adim: Appointed times, feasts
מוֹעֲדִים
The plural names recurring observances, showing how an appointed time can shape a rhythm through the year.
edah: Assembly, congregation
עֵדָה
The root links an appointed time with a gathered people, placing the practice within shared life.
הַחֻקָּה
ha-chuqqah
GROWS FROM
חקק
chaqaq
Inscribe, prescribe, decree.
“statute” in this verse is ha-chuqqah. The word for ordinance carries the sense of what is inscribed or prescribed, a form with a defined shape. Alongside keeping and appointed time, it shows a practice held across time by both its form and its return.
ALSO GROWS
choq: Statute, prescribed measure
חֹק
A statute gives the practice a defined shape that can be carried forward.
mechoqeq: Lawgiver, ruler
מְחֹקֵק
This branch shows the root’s connection to establishing a form that governs how something is kept.
THE PATTERN
What must endure is preserved by returning to it at appointed times and carrying it forward in shared memory.
These are the appointed meetings of the LORD, set-apart assemblies, which you shall call out at their appointed times.We will not hide them from their children, recounting to the generation that follows the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonders that he has done.For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you show the Lord's death until he comes.THE THREAD
And the LORD God took Adam and set him down in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to guard it.Genesis uses לְשָׁמְרָהּ (le-shamrah, to keep or guard it), from שמר (shamar, guard or watch over), the same root as “keep” here. In one verse the object is a garden; in the other, a recurring ordinance, the same verb holds preservation as active care.
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