What Does Exodus 20:9 Mean?
Six days you shall serve, and do all your work.
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
Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:THE KEY
The Hebrew word for labor also carries the meaning of service, and the verse gives that service a boundary.
THE MEANING
Your work has a place in the rhythm of life: six days hold labor, while the next verse gives the seventh to rest. The Hebrew word translated “labour” also means “serve,” joining daily work to service without letting it fill every day.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that work must fill every day to prove your worth loses its footing here: work is given a limit.
THE ROOT
תַּעֲבֹד
taʿavod
GROWS FROM
עבד
ʿ-b-d
to work, serve, or cultivate
“serve” in this verse is taʿavod. The verb תַּעֲבֹד (taʿavod, “you shall work”) comes from עבד (ʿ-b-d), the root behind עֶבֶד (ʿeved, “servant”) and עֲבוֹדָה (ʿavodah, “service” or “labor”). The Hebrew holds work and service together, then places both inside a six-day rhythm with a boundary.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: A servant or worker
עֶבֶד
The shared root links labor with service: the verse’s work is expressed through the same word-family as serving.
ʿavodah: Work or service
עֲבוֹדָה
This noun makes the shared sense plain: what the verse calls labor belongs to the language of service too.
THE PATTERN
Work has a real place in life, and rest is part of its rhythm.
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 the LORD God took Adam and set him down in the garden of Eden, to serve it and to guard it.“Dress” translates a form of עבד (ʿ-b-d), the same root as “labour” here. The root also describes tending the garden, so the word can hold work as cultivation and service within it.
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