What Does Leviticus 19:14 Mean in the King James?
Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: 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
A person’s inability to hear the curse or see the trap never makes them invisible to God.
THE MEANING
Your words can target someone who cannot hear them, and a hidden obstacle can target someone who cannot see it. The verse places both forms of harm beside reverence for God, whose presence does not depend on what another person can perceive. What that person cannot detect is still seen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that harm does not matter if its target cannot detect it.
THE ROOT
מִכְשׁוֹל
mikshol
GROWS FROM
כשל
To stumble, totter, or fall; in a causative form, to make someone stumble.
“stumblingblock” in this verse is mikshol. The Hebrew word for the obstacle and the root for stumbling belong to one verbal family: the thing placed in someone’s way is named by the fall it can cause. The verse makes the hidden trap and its consequence part of the same image.
ALSO GROWS
kashal: To lose one’s footing or fall.
כָּשַׁל
This is the action the stumbling block can bring about.
hikhshil: To make someone stumble or fall.
הִכְשִׁיל
This causative form makes clear that placing the obstacle involves setting another person’s fall in motion.
תְקַלֵּל
teqallel
GROWS FROM
קלל
To be light or slight; in a causative form, to make light of or diminish.
The verb for cursing grows from a root that also means to be light or make light. A curse therefore carries the image of diminishing someone, treating them as insignificant.
ALSO GROWS
qalal: To be slight or to treat something as light.
קָלַל
This root sense reveals the diminishing image carried by the verb for cursing.
qelalah: A spoken curse or imprecation.
קְלָלָה
This noun shares the root of the prohibited act of cursing the deaf.
THE PATTERN
God’s regard for people reaches precisely where another person can exploit what they cannot perceive.
Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way. And all the people shall say, Amen.Open thy mouth for the dumb in the cause of all such as are appointed to destruction.Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.THE THREAD
Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.Leviticus forbids placing a stumbling block before someone who cannot see it; Romans names the wider pattern of setting an obstacle in another person’s way. Both verses make the harm visible by showing how one person’s act can become another person’s fall.
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