What Does Exodus 22:19 Mean?
Whoever lies down with a beast shall surely be 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
Whosoever lieth with a beast shall surely be put to death.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats the root for death, making death itself the emphatic center of the sentence.
THE MEANING
The verse puts a hard boundary before you: lying with an animal carries the stated penalty of death. The Hebrew repeats the root for dying, giving the sentence blunt, emphatic force. The words leave no soft edge around the boundary or its consequence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that this act carries no consequence: the sentence names death as its penalty.
THE ROOT
מוֹת יוּמָת
mot yumat
GROWS FROM
מות
To die or be dead; in a causative passive form, to be put to death.
“surely be put to death” in this verse is mot yumat. The sentence uses the death-root twice: first as “dying,” then in the form “he shall be put to death.” English conveys certainty, while Hebrew lets the word for death echo inside the penalty itself.
ALSO GROWS
māvet: Death
מָוֶת
The noun makes explicit the outcome named by the repeated verb in the verse.
mēt: Dead
מֵת
This branch names the resulting state, connecting the act of dying with the sentence’s stated penalty.
THE PATTERN
When scripture marks a forbidden crossing, it can state death as the consequence without softening the words.
But from the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.And if a man lies down with an animal, he shall surely die; and you shall strike down the animal.Whoever has set aside Moses' instruction dies without compassion under two or three witnesses.THE THREAD
But from the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.Genesis 2:17 repeats the same root as מוֹת תָּמוּת (mot tamut, “you shall surely die”), while Exodus has מוֹת יוּמָת (mot yumat, “he shall surely be put to death”). The repeated sound makes death the explicit consequence in both sentences, though one names dying and the other being put to death.
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