What Does Numbers 5:29 Mean in the King James?
This is the law of jealousies, when a wife goeth aside to another instead of her husband, and is defiled;
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 verse makes a wife’s turning aside the hinge between the bond she leaves and the law of jealousy that names the breach.
THE MEANING
This verse names a law whose terms are jealousy, a wife’s turning aside from her husband, and defilement. It holds the act, the relationship, and the resulting condition together in a single legal sentence.
THE ROOT
הַקְּנָאֹת
haqqənāʾōt
GROWS FROM
קנא
q-n-ʾ
To be zealous or jealous.
“jealousies” in this verse is haqqənāʾōt. The law’s name comes from a root whose word family carries both jealousy and zeal. Here that intensity sits beside the wife’s turning aside and shapes how the breach is named.
ALSO GROWS
qānāʾ: To be jealous or zealous.
קָנָא
The verb shows the active force contained in the law’s name.
qinʾāh: Jealousy or zeal.
קִנְאָה
This noun shares the root of the verse’s “jealousies,” keeping its relational intensity visible.
תִּשְׂטֶה
tiśṭeh
GROWS FROM
שׂטה
ś-ṭ-h
To turn aside or deviate.
The Hebrew root makes movement the core of “goeth aside”: the wife turns from the relationship named in the verse. That movement is the hinge linking the bond to the law’s terms.
ALSO GROWS
śāṭāh: To turn aside or stray.
שָׂטָה
This verb is the root form behind the verse’s description of the wife’s departure.
tiśṭeh: She turns aside.
תִּשְׂטֶה
This is the verse’s inflected form, making the turning itself the stated condition.
וְנִטְמָאָה
wəniṭmāʾāh
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
To be unclean or impure.
The root family connects “defiled” with impurity and an unclean state, giving the word a ritual as well as relational register. The verse ends by naming a condition alongside the act of turning aside.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmēʾ: Unclean or impure.
טָמֵא
This root form reveals the state carried by the verse’s word “defiled.”
ṭumʾāh: Impurity or uncleanness.
טֻמְאָה
This noun shows the wider condition named by the same root.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures a bond as joining, then describes its breach as departure from that bond.
Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD.Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.THE THREAD
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man’s wife go aside, and commit a trespass against him,The phrase “go aside” uses the same root שׂטה (śṭh), “turn aside,” as this verse. Numbers 5:12 states the turning as the condition; verse 29 names the law attached to it.
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