What Does Exodus 22:22 Mean?
You shall not press on any widow or fatherless child.
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
Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb names the act of pressing someone down, so the verse draws its boundary around exploitation itself.
THE MEANING
The verse names a boundary around the widow or fatherless child, whose protection has been stripped away: they are not to be pressed down. Its force reaches active affliction, not only the absence of care.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the lie that having less protection makes someone fair game for harm.
THE ROOT
תְעַנּוּן
teʿannûn
GROWS FROM
ענה
to afflict, oppress, or bring low
“press on” in this verse is teʿannûn. The verb תְעַנּוּן (teʿannûn) names the doing of affliction; עִנּוּי (ʿinnûy) names the resulting state, and מְעַנֶּה (məʿannēh) names the one who causes it. The root keeps both the pressure and its agent in view: this is a prohibition against inflicting harm, not merely overlooking it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿinnûy: affliction, oppression
עִנּוּי
It names the condition produced by the action the verse forbids.
məʿannēh: one who afflicts
מְעַנֶּה
It makes the agent of the pressure visible: the verse forbids someone from taking that role toward the vulnerable.
THE PATTERN
A community is measured by whether it refuses to exploit the unprotected and attends to their hardship.
He executes judgment for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him bread and a cloak.The LORD guards the sojourners. He upholds the fatherless and the widow. But the way of the wicked he makes crooked.Clean and unstained service before God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widowed in their being pressed, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The “affliction” here is עֳנִי (ʿoni, affliction), from the same ענה (ʿanah, afflict) family as the verb in Exodus 22:22. One verse forbids causing that pressure; the other shows it seen and heard.
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