What Does Exodus 22:21 Mean?
You shall not press down on the sojourner, nor squeeze him; for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.
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 neither vex a stranger, nor oppress him: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.THE KEY
The verb behind “oppress” means “press, squeeze”: the verse forbids passing the constriction of מִצְרַיִם (Mitzrayim, “the two narrows”) on to the stranger.
THE MEANING
Your own memory of outsiderhood makes the stranger’s vulnerability recognizable now. The verse names two forms of harm: wronging someone without secure belonging, and pressing that person. What once constricted you cannot be recreated around another person.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Having suffered mistreatment does not entitle you to pass it on to someone more vulnerable.
THE ROOT
תִלְחָצֶנּוּ
tilḥāṣennû
GROWS FROM
לחץ
laḥaṣ
Press or squeeze; by extension, oppress.
“squeeze” in this verse is tilḥāṣennû. The verb holds physical squeezing and social oppression in the same root. Exodus 3:9 uses this root for the pressure Egypt applies, so the remembered past names the very pattern forbidden here.
ALSO GROWS
lāḥaṣ: Press, press hard, oppress.
לָחַץ
The same verb describes Egypt pressing Israel in Exodus 3:9, linking the command to a pressure the reader is told not to reproduce.
laḥaṣ: Pressure, oppression.
לַחַץ
The noun gives a name to pressure a person endures, making the harm more concrete than a general slight.
גֵּר
gēr
GROWS FROM
גור
gūr
To sojourn or reside as an outsider.
“sojourner” in this verse is gēr. The verse uses the same word for the person who must not be harmed and for the people the reader once was. “Stranger” becomes a remembered position within the community, not a label for someone beyond its concern.
ALSO GROWS
gūr: To sojourn or live as a resident outsider.
גּוּר
The noun for the stranger grows from a verb for living among others without secure belonging.
megūrîm: Sojournings or temporary residences.
מְגוּרִים
This branch frames outsiderhood as a lived condition rather than a fixed kind of person.
THE PATTERN
Remembered vulnerability becomes a boundary against making another person endure it.
So love the sojourner, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt.Remember those in bonds, as though bound with them, and those held in harm, as you yourselves also are in the body.THE THREAD
Now therefore, look, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the pressing with which the Egyptians press upon them.The Hebrew noun translated “oppression” and verb translated “oppress” here both come from לחץ (laḥaṣ, “press, squeeze”), the same root behind “oppress” in Exodus 22:21. Egypt is the precise memory the command invokes: the pressure once applied there is not to be carried forward against the stranger.
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