What Does Exodus 20:14 Mean in the King James?
Thou shalt not commit adultery.
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 command names a breach of fidelity with a Hebrew root Scripture also uses for covenant unfaithfulness.
THE MEANING
This boundary holds sexual fidelity as part of the trust shared between people. The Hebrew word reaches beyond a single act: its word family also describes covenant unfaithfulness, making betrayal a rupture of relationship.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that adultery is only a private act: the same Hebrew word can name covenantal unfaithfulness, so the breach carries relational meaning.
THE ROOT
תִּנְאָף
ti'naf
GROWS FROM
נ־א־ף
To commit adultery; to be sexually unfaithful.
The root נאף (na’aph, commit adultery) also describes unfaithfulness to a covenant. The word holds the act and its relational breach together, reaching beyond the narrower sense of a private sexual transgression.
ALSO GROWS
no'ef: An adulterer; one who commits adultery.
נֹאֵף
The person who commits the act is named from the same root, joining the actor to the breach.
ni'uf: Adultery; adulterous conduct.
נִאֻף
This noun carries the same root into a name for the act itself, keeping the focus on a breach of fidelity.
THE PATTERN
Fidelity is guarded as a bond of trust, and adultery is named as a breach that reaches beyond the act itself.
But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.Yet ye say, Wherefore? Because the LORD hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously: yet is she thy companion, and the wife of thy covenant.Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery:THE THREAD
But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.The verb “committeth adultery” grows from the same root, נאף (na’aph, commit adultery), as the command in Exodus. Proverbs traces the act into understanding and a person’s own life, showing that the breach reaches beyond outward appearance.
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