What Does Leviticus 18:10 Mean?
Do not uncover the nakedness of your son's daughter, or of your daughter's daughter. Do not uncover theirs, for it is your own nakedness.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The nakedness of thy son’s daughter, or of thy daughter’s daughter, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover: for theirs is thine own nakedness.THE KEY
The verse treats a granddaughter’s exposure as the elder’s own nakedness, making kinship itself a boundary of shared bodily consequence.
THE MEANING
The verse names a son’s daughter and a daughter’s daughter within a clear prohibition: their nakedness is not to be uncovered. Its reason is direct: their nakedness is your own. The relationship itself makes this boundary personal and present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that family closeness or authority makes a descendant’s body less protected: the verse identifies her nakedness as your own.
THE ROOT
תְּגַלֶּה
tegalleh
GROWS FROM
גלה
to uncover, reveal, bring into view
“uncover” in this verse is tegalleh. The root names the movement from covered to disclosed; a related form, נִגְלָה (niglah), means “was revealed.” Here the command names exposure itself, then binds the exposed body to the speaker through the words “thine own nakedness.”
ALSO GROWS
galah: to uncover or reveal
גָּלָה
This verb shows the root’s basic movement from concealment into view.
niglah: was revealed or appeared
נִגְלָה
This related form shows the other side of uncovering: what was hidden becomes visible.
עֶרְוָה
ʿervah
GROWS FROM
ערה
to lay bare, empty, or pour out
The noun עֶרְוָה is linked to ערה, a verb of laying bare or pouring out. Alongside גלה, the verse uses a second root of exposure: one names the act of uncovering, while the other names the nakedness exposed.
ALSO GROWS
ʿarah: to pour out or lay bare
עָרָה
This verbal form carries the exposure sense associated with the noun in the verse.
heʿerah: he uncovered or laid bare
הֶעֱרָה
This form makes the act of laying bare explicit, echoing the verse’s גלה verb through a different root.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats sexual boundaries as consequential because a breach implicates bodies and relationships.
And the man who lies down with his father's wife has uncovered his father's nakedness. Both of them shall surely die; their blood is upon them.But if a man finds the pledged young woman in the field, and the man grips her and lies down with her, then the man alone who lay down with her shall die.Flee the selling of bodies. Every shortcoming that a person does is outside the body; but the one who sells bodies misses the mark against his own body.THE THREAD
Do not uncover the nakedness of your father, or your mother's. She is your mother. Do not uncover her nakedness.The same Hebrew verb from גלה appears in both verses, and both ground the prohibition in the kinship named. Verse 18:7 names parents; verse 18:10 names descendants, so the same uncovering boundary extends through the generations.
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