What Does Exodus 21:17 Mean?
And he who curses his father or his mother is surely put to death.
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 he that curseth his father, or his mother, shall surely be put to death.THE KEY
The verse’s word for cursing also carries the sense of making light of someone, and the sentence answers that contempt with death.
THE MEANING
You encounter a sentence that treats cursing either parent as a capital offense: the word translated “curseth” also carries the sense of making light of them. The stated consequence is death, without qualification.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that contemptuous words toward a parent are harmless because they are only words.
THE ROOT
מְקַלֵּל
meqallēl
GROWS FROM
ק־ל־ל
Q-L-L
Be light; make light of or treat as insignificant.
“curses” in this verse is meqallēl. English “curse” can sound like a spoken formula or outburst; this Hebrew verb comes from a root that also means to be light or make light of. The wording links cursing father or mother with treating them as insignificant, while the verse states a death penalty.
ALSO GROWS
qālal: Be light, slight, or insignificant.
קָלַל
This sense opens the verse’s “curse” beyond an insult: the act also carries the idea of making light of a parent.
qillēl: Curse or make light of.
קִלֵּל
This verb form shows how the root’s sense of lightness extends into the speech named in the verse.
qelālāh: Curse or malediction.
קְלָלָה
The noun preserves the same root connection between cursing and making light.
מוֹת יוּמָת
môt yûmat
GROWS FROM
מ־ו־ת
M-W-T
Die; death.
“shall surely be put to death” in this verse is môt yûmat. The Hebrew places an infinitive absolute from root מ־ו־ת before a passive verb from that same root, intensifying the death sentence. English expresses that emphasis with “surely.”
ALSO GROWS
māwet: Death.
מָוֶת
This noun makes the repeated root’s subject explicit.
mēt: Dead; a dead person.
מֵת
This form shows the root’s movement from dying to the state of death.
yāmût: He dies or will die.
יָמוּת
This verb shares the root that is intensified in the verse’s death sentence.
THE PATTERN
The biblical texts mark cursing a parent as a rupture serious enough to be answered with death or the image of a light extinguished.
For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely die. He has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.Whoever curses his father or his mother, his lamp goes out in the pupil of darkness.For God commanded, saying, Honor your father and mother, and, Whoever speaks evil of father or mother, let him end in death.THE THREAD
For everyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely die. He has cursed his father or his mother; his blood is upon him.Leviticus uses the same Hebrew root ק־ל־ל (q-l-l), “to make light of” or “curse,” and repeats the death root in its sentence. The shared wording makes the link between contemptuous speech and the stated penalty unmistakable.
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