What Does Exodus 20:25 Mean?
And if you make me an altar of stones, you shall not build it of cut stone, for if you wave your blade over it, you have profaned it.
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
And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.THE KEY
The altar is meant to remain unshorn: the Hebrew word for “hewn” shares its root with the cutting that strips wool from a sheep.
THE MEANING
You encounter sacredness here as a boundary around what a hand may impose: the stones stay uncut, and a raised tool profanes them. The altar’s name carries slaughter and sacrifice, holding the offering of life beside the prohibition against cutting its stones.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The idea that human refinement makes an object more fit for the sacred is undone here: raising a tool to shape the altar’s stones makes them profane.
THE ROOT
גָּזִית
gāzît
GROWS FROM
גזז
גָּזַז (gāzaz), to shear, cut off, or hew.
“cut stone” in this verse is gāzît. גָּזִית (gāzît, “hewn”) belongs to גזז (gāzaz, “shear or cut”), the root behind sheep-shearing. The raised tool’s action belongs to a word-family for cutting material away, and the altar’s stones are kept whole by forbidding that cut.
ALSO GROWS
gāzaz: To shear or cut off.
גָּזַז
This verb names the removal that turns whole stone into shaped material.
gōzēz: One who shears.
גֹּזֵז
Isaiah uses this root for sheep-shearers, linking the altar’s forbidden cut with the literal cutting of wool.
מִזְבֵּחַ
mizbēaḥ
GROWS FROM
זבח
זָבַח (zāvaḥ), to slaughter for sacrifice.
The altar’s name carries the action of sacrifice within it: it is a place where life is offered. That meaning places the raised tool beside a different kind of force, the altar receives sacrifice, while its stones are not to be cut by human hands.
ALSO GROWS
zevaḥ: Sacrifice; a sacrificial feast.
זֶבַח
This noun makes explicit the offering bound up in the altar’s name.
zōvēaḥ: One who sacrifices.
זֹבֵחַ
This form names the person performing the altar’s central act, keeping the word-family attached to sacrifice.
וַתְּחַלְלֶהָ
vatteḥallelēhā
GROWS FROM
חלל
חָלַל (ḥālal), to profane or make common.
“profaned” in this verse is vatteḥallelēhā. The verb names a change in the stone’s set-apart status. A consonantal neighbor, חָלָל (ḥālāl, “one pierced or slain”), brings an image of puncture close to the lifted implement without making it a separate claim about the verse.
ALSO GROWS
ḥillēl: To profane or desecrate.
חִלֵּל
This form shares the root’s direct sense: the act makes what is set apart common.
ḥālāl: One pierced or slain.
חָלָל
This consonantal neighbor places an image of piercing beside the tool raised over the stone.
THE PATTERN
Sacred dwelling is formed from stones received whole, with their set-apartness not conferred by human cutting.
And there you shall build an altar to the LORD your God, an altar of stones; you shall not wave any iron upon them.As Moses, the servant of the LORD, commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the book of the instruction of Moses, an altar of whole stones, over which no one has waved any iron. And they raised on it rising offerings to the LORD, and slaughtered wholeness offerings.You also, as living stones, are built up into a house of breath, a set-apart priesthood, to carry up sacrifices of breath, well received by God through Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
He was pressed, and he was bowed low, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb he was led to the slaughter, and like a ewe before her shearers he was mute, so he did not open his mouth.The Hebrew behind “hewn,” גָּזִית (gāzît, “hewn”), shares the root גזז (gāzaz, “shear or cut”) with Isaiah’s word for “shearers,” גֹּזְזֶיהָ (gōzzehā). Exodus uses that cutting-root for stone while forbidding the tool’s touch; Isaiah shows the same root in the literal act of shearing.
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