What Does Leviticus 18:18 Mean in the King James?
Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.
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 verb rendered “vex” comes from a root of binding and hostility, so the verse names the arrangement by the rivalry it knots into the sisters’ lives.
THE MEANING
The verse names a relationship that makes one sister a rival to the other and binds their intimacy to conflict. Its boundary is stated for the other sister’s lifetime, keeping the relational consequence in view alongside the sexual act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a second marriage can be added without changing the first bond: this verse names the resulting relation as rivalry.
THE ROOT
לִצְרֹר
litsror from tsarar
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind or tie up; in related uses, to press, vex, or act with hostility.
“to vex” in this verse is litsror from tsarar. The same Hebrew family can describe a bundle tied together and a woman made into a rival. Here, the verb names the relationship formed between the sisters as one of binding and hostility.
ALSO GROWS
tseror: A bundle, packet, or pouch.
צְרוֹר
A bundle is bound into one place; this concrete sense echoes the relational bond the verse describes as becoming rivalry.
tsarah: A rival wife; also distress or trouble.
צָרָה
In 1 Samuel 1:6 this noun describes a woman as another’s adversary, showing how this root family names the rival position created between women.
THE PATTERN
When one person is positioned against another, rivalry turns relationship into harm.
And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb.For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.THE THREAD
And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb.The word translated “adversary” is צָרָה (tsarah), from the same consonantal family as לִצְרֹר. Samuel makes the family’s relational meaning visible: one woman is placed as another’s rival, and that rivalry brings provocation and grief.
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