What Does Genesis 3:4 Mean in the King James?
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
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 serpent sets “not” before the warning’s doubled death-root, so death remains audible inside the denial.
THE MEANING
A voice makes the stated consequence sound unreal with a blunt contradiction. Yet the Hebrew repeats the root for dying beneath the negation, keeping the denied outcome at the center of the sentence. The verse holds the reader where assurance and consequence collide.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A consequence stops being real once someone confidently says it will not happen.
THE ROOT
לֹא־מוֹת תְּמֻתוּן
lo-mot temutun
GROWS FROM
מות
to die; be dead
“surely die” in this verse is lo-mot temutun. The Hebrew stacks מוֹת (mot, “dying”) before תְּמֻתוּן (temutun, “you will die”), an infinitive absolute followed by a finite verb that intensifies the claim. The serpent puts לֹא (lo, “not”) over that same repeated root, so the word for dying remains audible inside its denial.
ALSO GROWS
mot: to die; dying (infinitive absolute)
מוֹת
It is the first half of the doubled construction here, voicing death before the negation lands on it.
māvet: death
מָוֶת
This noun names the outcome carried by the same root, making the connection between “die” and “death” visible.
THE PATTERN
The text keeps death at the end of a path visible even when the path looks right or its outcome is denied.
There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.THE THREAD
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.Genesis 2:17 says מוֹת תָּמוּת (mot tamut, “you shall surely die”), using מות (mût, “to die”) in an emphatic construction. Genesis 3:4 repeats that construction and sets לֹא (lo, “not”) before it, making the serpent’s sentence a direct reversal of the warning’s wording.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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