What Does Deuteronomy 19:14 Mean in the King James?
Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmark, which they of old time have set in thine inheritance, which thou shalt inherit in the land that the LORD thy God giveth thee to possess it.
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
A boundary is the line that keeps a neighbor’s inheritance from being quietly absorbed.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks wherever someone else’s allotted place borders yours: a boundary carries the weight of an inheritance, even when shifting it would be easy to conceal. The land beside you does not become yours to redraw.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that shifting a boundary takes nothing from the neighbor on the other side.
THE ROOT
גְּבוּל
gevul
GROWS FROM
ג־ב־ל
g-b-l
To mark out or establish a boundary; the boundary itself.
The verse places gevul (“boundary, border”) alongside gābal (“mark out a boundary”), words from the same root. English separates the landmark from the act of setting it; Hebrew keeps them in one word-family, so shifting the marker also shifts a neighbor’s defined territory.
ALSO GROWS
gevul: Boundary, border, or territory.
גְּבוּל
This is the boundary named in the verse: a line that defines an allotment, not just a stone in the soil.
gābal: To mark out or establish a boundary.
גָּבַל
The verse uses this related verb for what earlier generations did, joining the established line to the boundary itself.
THE PATTERN
A marked boundary protects another person’s allotted place from being quietly absorbed.
Some remove the landmarks; they violently take away flocks, and feed thereof.Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set.Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:THE THREAD
Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless:The verse repeats the warning against moving the landmark, then names the fatherless person whose fields that boundary protects. The shared boundary language makes the consequence plain: shifting the line can become entry into someone else’s inheritance.
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