What Does Exodus 31:14 Mean?
You shall guard the sabbath therefore, for it is set apart for you. Every one who pierces it shall surely die. For whoever does any work in it, that living soul shall be cut off from among his people.
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 keep the sabbath therefore; for it is holy unto you: every one that defileth it shall surely be put to death: for whosoever doeth any work therein, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.THE KEY
The Sabbath marks a boundary of belonging as well as a day of cessation, and this verse names its violation as death and severance.
THE MEANING
The Sabbath stands before you as time set apart for you, and work within it is named as profanation. The verse states the consequence without easing it: death, and being cut off from one’s people. This boundary reaches into both bodily life and communal belonging.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sacred time is only a private preference with no claim on communal life: here, violating the Sabbath carries the stated consequence of death and separation from the people.
THE ROOT
שַׁבָּת
shabbat
GROWS FROM
שבת
Cease, stop, desist.
The Sabbath carries the action of ceasing inside its name: the day is marked by what stops. Here, work within that set-apart time is not treated as ordinary activity; it is named as profanation, with severe consequences.
ALSO GROWS
shavat: To cease or desist.
שָׁבַת
This verb shares the Sabbath’s root, revealing that the day and the act of stopping belong to the same word family.
shabbaton: A sabbath rest, a marked cessation.
שַׁבָּתוֹן
This related word extends the same root into a designated interval of rest.
וְנִכְרְתָה
venikhretah
GROWS FROM
כרת
Cut, cut off.
“cut off” in this verse is venikhretah. The verse uses the language of cutting for the loss of place among the people. The same root appears in the Hebrew phrase for making a covenant, כָּרַת בְּרִית (karat berit, “cut a covenant”), giving the image of severance a sharp communal resonance.
ALSO GROWS
karat: To cut or cut off.
כָּרַת
This is the root verb behind the verse’s image of being cut off.
karat berit: To cut a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb used for cutting off also appears in the phrase for establishing a covenant, linking the root with communal bonds.
קֹדֶשׁ
qodesh
GROWS FROM
קדש
Set apart, dedicate as sacred.
The verse calls the Sabbath qodesh, set apart unto you: holiness here marks a boundary in time. That helps explain why treating the day as ordinary work is named as profanation.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart, holy.
קָדוֹשׁ
This adjective describes what belongs to the same set-apart word family as the Sabbath’s holiness.
qiddesh: To set apart or sanctify.
קִדֵּשׁ
This verb shows the root as an act of marking something for sacred use.
THE PATTERN
The seventh day is set apart through cessation from work, and Scripture treats that cessation as a meaningful boundary.
And God blessed the seventh day and set it apart, for on it he had stopped from all his work which God had created and made.But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.He said to them, The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.THE THREAD
And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made, and he stopped on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.Genesis 2:2 uses שָׁבַת (shavat, “to cease”) for God’s resting, from the same root as Sabbath. The shared root shows that profaning the day crosses the boundary of time marked by cessation.
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