What Does Exodus 20:10 Mean?
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.
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
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:THE KEY
The Sabbath is a cessation whose boundary reaches every being inside your gates, including those whose labor serves you.
THE MEANING
The seventh day belongs to the LORD your God, and work stops for everyone within your household: you, your children, your servants, your cattle, and the resident stranger. The pause includes those who work for you and those whose presence in your home is marked as outsider.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a household can keep a day of rest while everyone under its authority continues working.
THE ROOT
שַׁבָּת
Shabbat
GROWS FROM
שבת
sh-b-t
Cease, stop, desist.
“Sabbath” carries the action of ceasing: the day is named for the stopping of work. Here that cessation extends across the whole household, so its boundary includes everyone whose labor or presence is within the gates.
ALSO GROWS
shavat: To cease or desist.
שָׁבַת
The same root describes God ceasing from work on the seventh day, linking this household pause with the creation pattern.
shabbaton: A solemn cessation or rest.
שַׁבָּתוֹן
This related form makes the Sabbath’s defining action visible: work gives way to a shared pause.
גֵּר
ger
GROWS FROM
גור
g-w-r
Sojourn, dwell as a resident outsider.
“sojourner” in this verse is ger. The “stranger” is a ger, a sojourning resident. The verse includes even this person in the cessation, once they are within the household’s gates.
ALSO GROWS
ger: A resident sojourner or outsider living among a people.
גֵּר
This is the person explicitly included in the household’s Sabbath pause.
lagur: To sojourn or reside as an outsider.
לָגוּר
The verb behind the noun keeps the stranger’s outsider status in view, even as the verse includes them within the gates.
THE PATTERN
The seventh-day cessation extends beyond the one who rests to include the people and creatures within their care.
And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made, and he stopped on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall stop, that your ox and your donkey may settle, and the son of your handmaid and the stranger may be refreshed.He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.THE THREAD
And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made, and he stopped on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.The verb וַיִּשְׁבֹּת (vayishbot, ceased) comes from the same root שבת (sh-b-t, cease) carried in “Sabbath.” The household’s pause echoes this creation pattern: work stops on the seventh day, and that cessation reaches everyone within the gates.
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