What Does Exodus 21:10 Mean?
If he takes another wife, her food, her covering, and her duty of marriage, he does not diminish.
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
If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.THE KEY
The verse makes addition non-subtractive: another wife may be added, but the first woman’s food, covering, and marital rights cannot be reduced.
THE MEANING
The verse gives the woman a concrete claim even when her husband takes another wife: nourishment, clothing, and marital rights remain owed to her. The household may change, but those obligations do not disappear. Her care is not a favor that can be withdrawn at will.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that taking another wife gives a husband permission to deprive the first woman of her support, clothing, or marital rights.
THE ROOT
יִגְרַע
yigraʿ
GROWS FROM
גרע
To diminish, reduce, or subtract.
“diminish” in this verse is yigraʿ. The verb carries the force of subtraction or removal. The same root describes a name being removed from a family line; here, the barred subtraction is concrete: what is owed to the woman cannot be reduced when another wife enters.
ALSO GROWS
yiggaraʿ: Be diminished or removed.
יִגָּרַע
In Numbers 27:4, Zelophehad’s daughters ask why their father’s name should be removed from his family, showing the root’s force in the loss of someone’s place.
tigreʿu: You diminish or subtract.
תִגְרְעוּ
Deuteronomy 4:2 uses this form for diminishing from the instruction, showing the same root marking what must not be taken away from what is given.
שְׁאֵרָהּ
she'erah
GROWS FROM
שאר
Flesh or bodily substance; the word in this verse means food or sustenance.
The word for her food belongs to the language of flesh and kin. Her provision is tied to her embodied life, not treated as an expendable extra.
ALSO GROWS
she'er: Flesh or bodily substance.
שְׁאֵר
This is the noun behind the verse’s word for food, keeping sustenance close to the body it sustains.
she'er besarô: Near kin, literally flesh of his flesh.
שְׁאֵר בְּשָׂרוֹ
Leviticus 18:6 uses the same word for flesh in speaking of close kin, bringing bodily provision and family relation into the same word-family.
כְּסוּתָהּ
kesutah
GROWS FROM
כסה
To cover or conceal.
The word for clothing is formed from the verb meaning to cover. The verse names her covering among the concrete things that must remain intact when another wife is added.
ALSO GROWS
kasah: To cover or conceal.
כָּסָה
The verb names the covering action beneath the noun for her clothing.
mikseh: A covering.
מִכְסֶה
Exodus 26:14 uses this related word for a covering over the tent, showing the same root’s sense of a protective outer layer.
THE PATTERN
Household obligations remain concrete even when the household’s circumstances change.
When a man takes a new wife, he does not go out to war, and no matter passes over him. He is free at home one year, and he gladdens the wife he has taken.Let the husband give to the wife what is owed in goodwill, and likewise the wife to the husband.THE THREAD
Why should the name of our father be shaved away from among his family, because he has no son? Give us a holding among the brothers of our father.The same Hebrew root, גרע (garaʿ, diminish or remove), appears in the daughters’ question about their father’s name being ‘done away’ from his family. The shared verb connects diminished provision with the removal of someone’s place and inheritance.
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