What Does Leviticus 18:5 Mean in the King James?
Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the LORD.
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 pairs watchful keeping with living: the instruction is a place a person inhabits, and life unfolds within it.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you as a person whose life takes shape inside divine instruction. Keeping its words is attentive practice, and the life named here is lived within them, with the LORD as its source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that life can be found only beyond divine instruction; here, life is located within it.
THE ROOT
וָחַי
vaḥay
GROWS FROM
חיה
Live, be alive.
The verb for “shall live” belongs to the same root family as words for the living and for life itself. “Live in them” places life inside the practice of the instruction, not somewhere separate from it.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living, alive.
חַי
This branch names the living condition itself, linking the verse’s “shall live” to being alive.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
This noun makes the shared root visible: the verse speaks of life through the same seed that forms “live.”
וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם
u-shmartem
GROWS FROM
שמר
Guard, watch over.
The verb translated “keep” carries the sense of guarding or watching over. Paired with “live in them,” it presents the instruction as something held in attentive practice, within which life unfolds.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: Watcher, keeper, guard.
שֹׁמֵר
The watcher branch makes the attentiveness inside “keep” audible.
mishmeret: Charge, custody, keeping.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch frames keeping as something entrusted to care for, echoing the verse’s call to hold the instruction in view.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places life within responsive participation in divine instruction.
That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.He taught me also, and said unto me, Let thine heart retain my words: keep my commandments, and live.It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.THE THREAD
That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.Leviticus says a person “shall live” in the instruction; Deuteronomy says the LORD “is thy life.” Both use the חיה (chayah) word family, joining life within the instruction to life in the presence of its source.
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