What Does Genesis 26:10 Mean?
And Abimelech said, What is this you have done to us? One of the people came near to lying with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.
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
And Abimelech said, What is this thou hast done unto us? one of the people might lightly have lien with thy wife, and thou shouldest have brought guiltiness upon us.THE KEY
The concealment nearly makes a whole people liable for a transgression they could commit without knowing what Isaac hid.
THE MEANING
Hidden truth can put other people at risk of becoming responsible for what they do not know. The feared act has not happened, yet its possibility is serious enough to be named as guilt falling on the whole community. Consequences can begin spreading before the harm is complete.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that withholding the truth is harmless as long as the feared harm has not happened: concealment can leave others vulnerable to crossing a boundary unknowingly.
THE ROOT
אָשָׁם
ʾāšām
GROWS FROM
אשם
To incur guilt or be liable.
The root reaches beyond an inward feeling: אָשָׁם can name guilt and also a reparation offering, while its verbal form describes being liable. Here, Abimelech says Isaac’s concealment could make the whole people answer for an act they might commit without knowing the truth.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāšēm: Guilty; liable.
אָשֵׁם
The verbal form shows guilt as a condition of responsibility, not only a feeling.
ʾāšām: Guilt offering; reparation offering.
אָשָׁם
This related use links guilt with the need to address the harm or liability it creates.
THE PATTERN
A concealed act can place a whole community within the reach of its consequences.
And Moses said to Aaron, What has this people done to you, that you have brought a great shortcoming upon them?Did not Achan the son of Zerah commit a breach in the devoted thing, and wrath fell on all the assembly of Israel? And that man did not breathe his last alone in his crookedness.Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?THE THREAD
And if a living soul misses the mark, and does any one of the things that are not to be done by the commands of the LORD; though he does not perceive it, yet he is guilty, and carries his crookedness.The word rendered guilty here is אָשֵׁם (ʾāšēm, liable), from the same root אשם (ʾ-sh-m, incur guilt) as Abimelech’s word for the guilt Isaac could bring upon the people. The root also names liability that remains real even when the person does not know what has happened.
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