What Does Exodus 20:6 Mean?
And showing faithful love to thousands of those who love me, and guarding my commands.
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 shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.THE KEY
Faithful love reaches thousands, while the line before names iniquity’s reach as three or four generations.
THE MEANING
God’s faithful love reaches to thousands of those who love and keep the commandments. Here, keeping carries the sense of guarding with attention, giving love the shape of sustained care for what God says. That reach opens far beyond the three or four generations named in the preceding line.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that inherited harm has the widest reach is undone here: the text gives faithful love a span of thousands, against the three or four generations named just before.
THE ROOT
חֶסֶד
chesed
GROWS FROM
ח־ס־ד
ḥ-s-d
Faithful, loyal love; steadfast kindness.
“showing faithful love” in this verse is chesed. Chesed joins kindness to loyalty and keeps relationship over time. The KJV’s “mercy” carries more than a moment of pity here: it is faithful love with staying power, extended to thousands.
ALSO GROWS
chasid: A faithful or devoted person.
חָסִיד
This related form shows the same root describing one marked by loyal devotion.
chasadim: Acts or expressions of faithful love.
חֲסָדִים
The plural form makes chesed visible in repeated acts of steadfast kindness.
שֹׁמְרֵי
shomrei
GROWS FROM
ש־מ־ר
sh-m-r
Guard, watch over, preserve.
“guarding my commands” in this verse is shomrei. The word rendered “keep” carries the sense of guarding and watching over; the commandments are held in careful attention. Beside “love,” it presents keeping as love’s attentive shape.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: A guard or watchman.
שֹׁמֵר
This branch makes the watchfulness within “keep” concrete.
mishmeret: A watch, charge, or guard duty.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
It shows shamar as sustained care for something entrusted.
THE PATTERN
Love for God takes visible form in keeping God’s commandments.
Perceive therefore that the LORD your God is God, the steady God, who guards the covenant and faithful love for those who love him and guard his commands to a thousand generations.If you love me, guard my instructions.For this is the love of God, that we guard his commands; and his commands are not heavy.THE THREAD
Guarding faithful love for thousands, carrying crookedness, rebellion, and falling short, and who by no means leaves the guilty clean, visiting the crookedness of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, to the third and to the fourth generation.Both verses use חֶסֶד (chesed, faithful love), and both place its reach at thousands. Exodus 34:7 sets that span alongside consequences reaching the third and fourth generation, making the scale contrast in Exodus 20:6 explicit.
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