What Does Deuteronomy 30:15 Mean in the King James?
See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil;
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
The Hebrew verb translated “set” also means “give” and “place”: life and death stand before you as real directions today, not distant abstractions.
THE MEANING
Life and good, death and evil are placed before you today as distinct realities. The verse speaks to the direction your choices take now: toward life, or toward death.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that your choices have no meaningful direction or consequence.
THE ROOT
נָתַתִּי
natatti
GROWS FROM
נתן
natan
Give, set, place.
The verb can mean “give” as well as “set”: what stands before you is presented and placed within reach. The paired paths are real possibilities before you today.
ALSO GROWS
natan: Give, set, place.
נָתַן
This verb is the root’s basic action, linking the verse’s “set before” with something given or placed before you.
mattanah: Gift.
מַתָּנָה
This noun from the same root shows the connection between giving and what is placed into someone’s hands.
הַחַיִּים
ha-chayyim
GROWS FROM
חיה
ch-y-h
Live, be alive.
The word for “life” grows from the verb “to live,” naming vitality rather than an abstract idea. Set beside death, it describes a way of being whose direction is present now.
ALSO GROWS
chay: Alive, living.
חַי
This adjective makes the root’s basic sense visible: life is being alive.
chayyah: Living creature.
חַיָּה
This word applies the same root to a creature that lives, showing life as embodied vitality.
THE PATTERN
A real choice is set before the reader, and its paths carry different directions and outcomes.
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:THE THREAD
I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:This verse repeats the same Hebrew verb, נתן (natan, “give, set, place”), and the same word for life, חַיִּים (chayyim, “life”). It opens the contrast in verse 15 into a choice whose reach extends to those who come after you.
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