What Does Leviticus 18:18 Mean?
Do not take a woman to her sister, to press her, to uncover her nakedness beside the other while the other lives.
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
Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time.THE KEY
The verb rendered “vex” comes from a root of binding and hostility, so the verse names the arrangement by the rivalry it knots into the sisters’ lives.
THE MEANING
The verse names a relationship that makes one sister a rival to the other and binds their intimacy to conflict. Its boundary is stated for the other sister’s lifetime, keeping the relational consequence in view alongside the sexual act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a second marriage can be added without changing the first bond: this verse names the resulting relation as rivalry.
THE ROOT
לִצְרֹר
litsror from tsarar
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind or tie up; in related uses, to press, vex, or act with hostility.
“press” in this verse is litsror from tsarar. The same Hebrew family can describe a bundle tied together and a woman made into a rival. Here, the verb names the relationship formed between the sisters as one of binding and hostility.
ALSO GROWS
tseror: A bundle, packet, or pouch.
צְרוֹר
A bundle is bound into one place; this concrete sense echoes the relational bond the verse describes as becoming rivalry.
tsarah: A rival wife; also distress or trouble.
צָרָה
In 1 Samuel 1:6 this noun describes a woman as another’s adversary, showing how this root family names the rival position created between women.
THE PATTERN
When one person is positioned against another, rivalry turns relationship into harm.
Her rival also pressed upon her to chafe her and to make her roar, because the LORD had closed her womb.For where boiling and strife are, there is no standing still and every base deed.But if you bite and devour one another, watch that you are not used up by one another.THE THREAD
Her rival also pressed upon her to chafe her and to make her roar, because the LORD had closed her womb.The word translated “adversary” is צָרָה (tsarah), from the same consonantal family as לִצְרֹר. Samuel makes the family’s relational meaning visible: one woman is placed as another’s rival, and that rivalry brings provocation and grief.
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