What Does Leviticus 18:20 Mean in the King James?
Moreover thou shalt not lie carnally with thy neighbour’s wife, to defile thyself with her.
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 pictures the act as “giving your lying-down for seed,” joining bodily union with what it may set in motion.
THE MEANING
This verse names sex with another person’s wife as an act that makes the speaker unclean. Its wording pictures the act as giving one’s lying-down for seed, so the bond carries both bodily and relational weight.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that adultery is only a private bodily act, detached from the people and bonds it touches.
THE ROOT
זֶרַע
zeraʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow; seed as what is sown and what continues as offspring.
The phrase “for seed” carries more than a physical image: the same Hebrew word can mean seed or offspring. That shared word lets the verse hold bodily union and its potential continuation together.
ALSO GROWS
zāraʿ: To sow or scatter seed.
זָרַע
The verb makes the seed image active: something is placed into the ground to grow.
zeraʿ: Seed, offspring, or descendants.
זֶרַע
The noun carries both the physical seed and what may continue from it, deepening the phrase “for seed.”
תִּתֵּן
titten
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
To give, set, or place.
The Hebrew does not only name lying down; it says not to give that lying-down for seed. The verb makes the act a directed giving, a nuance compressed into “lie carnally.”
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This is the verb’s root form and retains the concrete sense of placing or giving something.
mattan: A gift or present.
מַתָּן
This related noun shows the root’s reach into what is given, while the verse applies the verb to the act itself.
לְטָמְאָה
letamʾah
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
To become or render unclean.
“defile” in this verse is letamʾah. The verse names uncleanness as a result of the act, not as the person’s nature. The related words describe a condition of impurity and the state of being unclean.
ALSO GROWS
ṭamēʾ: Unclean or impure.
טָמֵא
This adjective describes the resulting state named by the verse’s verb.
ṭumʾāh: Uncleanness or impurity.
טֻמְאָה
This noun names the condition connected to the act of defiling.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats sexual union as a bodily bond whose meaning and consequences reach beyond the immediate act.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.But whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.What? know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body? for two, saith he, shall be one flesh.THE THREAD
And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should give seed to his brother.Both verses use זֶרַע (zeraʿ, “seed” or “offspring”). The shared word holds bodily seed and the continuation of a family line in the same image.
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