What Does Genesis 20:18 Mean?
For the LORD had held shut all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah, Abraham's wife.
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
For the LORD had fast closed up all the wombs of the house of Abimelech, because of Sarah Abraham’s wife.THE KEY
The doubled Hebrew verb makes the interruption emphatic: every womb in the household is held back because of Sarah.
THE MEANING
You are shown a force reaching the body’s most intimate capacity: God closes every womb in Abimelech’s household, and Sarah is named as the reason. The effect is collective, while the stated cause is particular; the verse holds both in view without hiding the bodily consequence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the assumption that reproductive blockage is always private or self-contained: here every womb in a household is affected, and the verse names a cause beyond the body.
THE ROOT
עָצֹר עָצַר
ʿāṣōr ʿāṣar
GROWS FROM
עצר
Hold back, restrain, shut up.
“held shut” in this verse is ʿāṣōr ʿāṣar. The Hebrew places an infinitive beside its verb, “restraining, the LORD restrained”, to intensify the act. This root also names restraint and confinement, so the closure here belongs to the language of being held back, not merely to a sealed body.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāṣûr: Restrained, detained.
עָצוּר
This form shows the same root describing someone held back, echoing the imposed restraint on the wombs.
ʿōṣer: Restraint, confinement.
עֹצֶר
The noun makes the root’s wider sense visible: what is closed can also be understood as what is confined.
רֶחֶם
reḥem
GROWS FROM
רחם
Womb; this same root family also carries the language of compassion.
English gives “wombs” as a body word, while Hebrew places it in the same root family as words for compassion and tender care. The shared root lets the language of the womb sit beside the language of tenderness even as this verse describes closure, not compassion.
ALSO GROWS
rāḥam: To show compassion, to have compassion.
רָחַם
This verb shares the root of “womb,” revealing a linguistic link between the womb and compassion.
raḥamim: Compassion, tender care.
רַחֲמִים
This noun makes the shared root especially clear: the Hebrew family includes both womb and compassion.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents reproductive capacity as something that can be restrained or opened through divine action.
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.But to Hannah he gave a double portion, for he loved Hannah, yet the LORD had shut her womb.And behold, your kinswoman Elisabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month for her, she who was called unyielding.THE THREAD
And Sarai said to Abram, Behold, the LORD has held me shut from bearing. Go in, I pray you, to my handmaid. Perhaps I may be built through her. And Abram heard and responded to the voice of Sarai.Sarah uses the same Hebrew root, עצר, when she says the LORD has restrained her from bearing. In Genesis 20:18 that verb is doubled and widened to every womb in the household, with Sarah still at the center.
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