What Does Exodus 22:18 Mean?
You shall not keep a sorceress alive.
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
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.THE KEY
The verse makes the addressee an active agent in withholding the sorceress’s life.
THE MEANING
This sentence places before you a direct command to deny life to a woman identified as a sorceress. Its Hebrew verb makes the addressee the one who does not keep her alive, and the verse states no qualification or remedy.
THE ROOT
תְּחַיֶּה
techayyeh
GROWS FROM
חיה
ḥ-y-h
To live or be alive; in this verb form, to keep someone alive.
“keep alive” in this verse is techayyeh. In addition to the KJV’s sense of allowing her to live, the Hebrew verb is causative: the addressee is told not to keep her alive. The grammar makes the withholding of life an action assigned to the addressee.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Alive; a living one.
חַי
It names the living state this verb form would maintain.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
It names the life that the command here withholds.
מְכַשֵּׁפָה
mekhashephah
GROWS FROM
כשף
k-sh-p
To practice sorcery.
“sorceress” in this verse is mekhashephah. This feminine form names a practitioner; related forms name the sorcerer and sorceries. The verse’s lethal command targets the person identified by this practice, while the root itself names the practice rather than death.
ALSO GROWS
mekhasheph: A male practitioner of sorcery.
מְכַשֵּׁף
It shows that the same root names practitioners of either sex.
keshephim: Sorceries.
כְּשָׁפִים
It names the practice associated with the person in this verse.
THE PATTERN
Across these passages, sorcery and related spirit practices meet boundaries that forbid participation, impose death, or place practitioners outside.
No one is found among you who makes his son or his daughter cross through the fire, who divines divinations, who reads clouds, who hisses, or who works spells.A man or a woman who is a medium, or who knows, shall surely die. They shall stone them with stones; their blood is upon them.Outside are the dogs, and the potion-makers, and the fornicators, and the bloodshedders, and the image-servers, and everyone who loves and makes a lie.THE THREAD
Then Pharaoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and the magicians of Egypt also did the same with their charms.Exodus 7:11 calls the sorcerers מְכַשְּׁפִים (mekhashephim, sorcerers), from the same כ־שׁ־ף (k-sh-p, practice sorcery) root. The shared word-family places the woman named here and Pharaoh’s male practitioners in the same lexical category; this verse attaches the command not to keep alive.
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