What Does Leviticus 18:17 Mean?
Do not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter. Do not take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to uncover their nakedness. They are her flesh. It is a plotted thing.
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
Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter, neither shalt thou take her son’s daughter, or her daughter’s daughter, to uncover her nakedness; for they are her near kinswomen: it is wickedness.THE KEY
The verse calls these relations her “flesh”: its boundary rests on kinship as a bodily bond, not merely on a rule about exposure.
THE MEANING
The verse draws a boundary around a woman and her descendants: sexual exposure of the woman does not extend to her daughter or granddaughters. It calls them her close kin and names crossing that boundary wickedness. Their kinship is part of the reason the act is prohibited.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sexual access to a mother extends permission to take her daughter or granddaughters; their place in the same family line makes the boundary clear.
THE ROOT
שְׁאֵרָה
she'erah
GROWS FROM
שאר
To remain or be left; the related noun used here means flesh or close kin.
The Hebrew word names these women as the woman’s close flesh, not simply as entries on a family tree. That makes the verse’s stated reason bodily and relational: the prohibition concerns her own kin.
ALSO GROWS
she'er: Flesh; close kin.
שְׁאֵר
Leviticus 18:6 uses this word for a person “near of kin” before naming the same boundary around uncovering nakedness.
she'erit: Remainder; remnant.
שְׁאֵרִית
This form preserves all three root consonants and carries the root’s sense of what remains; the kin word in this verse uses that same root family for flesh and close relation.
THE PATTERN
Kinship creates a bodily boundary that sexual taking can violate.
Do not draw near to any flesh of your flesh, to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD.It is heard commonly that there is the trade of bodies among you, and such trade as is not even named among the nations, that one should hold his father's wife.THE THREAD
Do not draw near to any flesh of your flesh, to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD.The phrase “near of kin” uses the Hebrew root שאר (she’er, flesh or close kin), the same root family behind “her near kinswomen” here; both verses also pair kinship with uncovering nakedness. The shared wording makes the kin relation itself part of the boundary the verse draws.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us