What Does Deuteronomy 12:31 Mean in the King James?
Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
What is offered to a god remains detestable to the LORD when it is the burning of children.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you wherever devotion is used to justify violence: the burning of sons and daughters remains abhorrent before the LORD. By naming them as sons and daughters, it refuses to let the language of sacrifice erase the people being burned.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an act becomes sacred or acceptable just because it is offered to a god.
THE ROOT
תּוֹעֵבָה
toʿevah
GROWS FROM
תעב
to detest, abhor
“abomination” in this verse is toʿevah. Toʿevah names something as detestable, not merely unfamiliar or different. The verse places that abhorrence beside the explicit act, sons and daughters burned, so devotion cannot hide the violence inside an abstract ritual label.
ALSO GROWS
taʿav: To regard with detestation.
תָּעַב
The verb makes the response inside the noun audible: this is something to be abhorred.
toʿevah: Something regarded as abhorrent.
תּוֹעֵבָה
This is the noun used in the verse, naming the act itself as detestable.
THE PATTERN
Devotion to God cannot sanctify harm; justice and mercy remain the measure of what is offered.
And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD.He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.THE THREAD
And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.Jeremiah uses the same root שׂרף (ś-r-p; saraph, burn) for the burning of sons and daughters, then says it was neither commanded nor even entered God’s heart. The shared root keeps the act concrete and makes it impossible to disguise as divine desire.
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