What Does Exodus 23:7 Mean?
Keep yourself far from a false word; do not strike down the clean and the aligned, for I will not align the wicked.
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
Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked.THE KEY
“Righteous” and “justify” grow from the same Hebrew root, linking the person’s alignment to the truth of the verdict.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to your judgments now: falsehood can put an innocent person within reach of death. Calling someone righteous cannot make wickedness right; the verdict remains answerable to what is true.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a verdict can make a false story true or make a wicked person righteous simply by naming them so.
THE ROOT
צַדִּיק
tsaddiq
GROWS FROM
צדק
ṣ-d-q
To be just or right; to be in alignment.
The Hebrew uses forms of the same root for “righteous” and “I will justify.” English gives them different shapes, while the Hebrew joins the person described as aligned to the act of declaring someone aligned. The verdict must answer to that reality; it cannot create it.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice, rightness, alignment.
צֶדֶק
This names the standard the judgment must reflect, keeping the verdict tied to what is right.
matsdiq: One who justifies or declares righteous.
מַצְדִּיק
Proverbs uses this form for the person who calls the wicked righteous, showing how the same root can name a verdict that breaks from reality.
atsdiq: I will justify; declare righteous.
אַצְדִּיק
This is the form in the verse’s final clause: the declaration of righteousness belongs to the same root as the righteous person.
THE PATTERN
A just verdict keeps its words answerable to reality: it does not make the wicked righteous or the innocent guilty.
If there be a striving between men, and they come to judgment, that the judges may judge them, then they shall align the aligned, and condemn the restless.He who aligns the wicked, and he who convicts the aligned one, both are loathed by the LORD.To show his alignment in this present season, so that he himself might be aligned, and the one who aligns the one who trusts in Jesus.THE THREAD
He who aligns the wicked, and he who convicts the aligned one, both are loathed by the LORD.In Hebrew, “just” and “justifieth” come from the same root, צדק (ṣ-d-q), as “righteous” and “justify” do in Exodus. Proverbs makes the inversion explicit: calling the wicked just breaks the very alignment the shared root names.
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