What Does Exodus 21:18 Mean?
And if men strive together, and one strikes another with a stone, or with his fist, and he does not die, but keeps to his bed.
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 men strive together, and one smite another with a stone, or with his fist, and he die not, but keepeth his bed:THE KEY
The blow is measured not only by whether the person dies, but by whether his body is forced to lie down.
THE MEANING
When force enters a conflict, the person may survive and still be unable to rise. Survival does not erase the injury; the verse keeps the injured person’s condition in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
“If the blow does not kill, it has done no serious harm.” The verse treats the surviving person’s injury as consequential.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁכָּב
mishkav
GROWS FROM
שכב
The consonantal root שכב (sh-k-b) means to lie down or recline.
“keeps to his bed” in this verse is mishkav. The Hebrew word for “bed” grows from the verb “to lie down.” The injury is described through the posture it leaves the person in: the blow has brought him down, even though he lives.
ALSO GROWS
shakhav: to lie down or recline
שָׁכַב
This is the verb at the root of “bed,” making the place and the bodily posture part of the same word family.
shokhev: one lying down
שֹׁכֵב
This form names the person in the posture the verse describes: alive, but laid low by the blow.
יְרִיבֻן
yerivun
GROWS FROM
ריב
The consonantal root ריב (r-y-b) means to contend or dispute.
“strive” in this verse is yerivun. The conflict begins with a word for contending, and the verse follows that contention into bodily harm. The same root can name both a quarrel and a dispute brought into judgment, linking the conflict to the legal reckoning that follows.
ALSO GROWS
riv: dispute or contention
רִיב
This noun shares the root and shows that the conflict can be named as a dispute, not only as a physical fight.
merivah: quarrel or strife
מְרִיבָה
This related word makes the opening conflict explicit: the injury grows out of contention between people.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats an injury as real and consequential even when it does not end in death.
If he rises again and walks outside upon his staff, then he who struck him is clear; only he gives for the stopping of his time, and causes him to be thoroughly healed.Break for break, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. As he has set a blemish in a man, so shall it be set upon him.And he came near to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and lifted him onto his own animal, and brought him to an inn, and tended him.THE THREAD
The LORD props him up on the couch of faintness, and you turn over all his bed in his sickness.The word for “bed” in Exodus and the word for “bed” here share the Hebrew root שכב (sh-k-b), “to lie down.” Exodus shows the injured person brought low; Psalm 41:3 uses that same lying-down word family for the place where the languishing person is strengthened.
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