What Does Exodus 21:25 Mean?
Burning for burning, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.
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
Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.THE KEY
The Hebrew word translated “for” also means “under” or “in place of,” placing each answer directly against its matching injury.
THE MEANING
Here, the measure is exact: a burning is answered by a burning, a wound by a wound, a stripe by a stripe. The verse states bodily retaliation plainly, with no abstraction between injury and answer.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that an injury warrants retaliation without limit: the answer is fixed to the same measure.
THE ROOT
תַּחַת
taḥat
GROWS FROM
תחת
t-ḥ-t
Under, beneath; the preposition also means in place of or for.
The repeated תַּחַת (taḥat, “under” or “in place of”) makes the pairing itself central: each injury is set against its corresponding injury. English “for” carries that relation but hides the word’s spatial sense of beneath and its sense of replacement.
ALSO GROWS
taḥtōn: Lower, below.
תַּחְתּוֹן
This related form preserves the root’s spatial sense of what is beneath.
taḥtīt: Lowest part, bottom.
תַּחְתִּית
This form also grows from the sense of below, illuminating the concrete depth beneath the exchange word “for.”
THE PATTERN
The measure of the answer corresponds to the harm named.
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,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.You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.THE THREAD
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,The same Hebrew word תַּחַת (taḥat, “for,” “in place of”) links each injury to its counterpart. This verse extends that repeated pairing from eyes, teeth, hands, and feet to burns, wounds, and stripes.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us