What Does Deuteronomy 4:23 Mean in the King James?
Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make you a graven image, or the likeness of any thing, which the LORD thy God hath forbidden thee.
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 verse treats the forbidden image as the visible fruit of an earlier inward failure: forgetting the covenant.
THE MEANING
The verse places the reader inside a sequence: the covenant is forgotten, then an image is fashioned. The danger is not merely losing words from memory; it is allowing a handmade likeness to take the place of the remembered bond.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that forgetting is harmless as long as the outward form remains intact. This verse links forgetting directly to making a forbidden substitute.
THE ROOT
הִשָּׁמְרוּ
hishameru
GROWS FROM
שׁמר
shamar
Guard, keep, watch over.
“Take heed” in this verse is hishameru. The warning begins with guarding yourselves, and the same root carries the sense of keeping watch and preserving what is entrusted. The verse connects the inner work of keeping the covenant in view with the outward refusal to fashion an image in its place.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: Keeper; watchman.
שֹׁמֵר
The keeper stays alert to what might be lost, echoing the verse’s warning against letting the covenant slip from remembrance.
mishmeret: Guard; charge; watch.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch names something entrusted to be kept, bringing the covenant’s continuing claim into focus.
פֶּסֶל
pesel
GROWS FROM
פסל
pasal
Hew, carve, shape by cutting.
“Graven image” in this verse is pesel. The Hebrew word points to something cut and shaped by human hands. The verse sets a made likeness beside a forgotten covenant: what is carved into visible form can become a substitute when the remembered bond is allowed to fade.
ALSO GROWS
pasal: To hew or carve.
פָּסַל
The verb makes the image’s human making explicit: it is shaped into form rather than received as the covenant.
pesilah: Carved work; carved image.
פְּסִילָה
This related form keeps the emphasis on an object produced through carving, illuminating the concrete act the verse forbids.
THE PATTERN
When the living bond with God slips from remembrance, people remake the divine into a manageable image.
Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day:Thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass.And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.THE THREAD
Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons;The warning there repeats the same root in both commands, “take heed” and “keep”, and places them beside “lest thou forget.” This makes remembrance part of guarding the living soul, opening why verse 23 treats image-making as the outward consequence of a forgotten covenant.
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