What Does Leviticus 18:22 Mean?
Do not lie down with a male in the beds of a woman. It is a stomach-turning 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 lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.THE KEY
Hebrew repeats one root for “lie” and “lyings,” making the prohibition about a specified sexual act.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks as a direct prohibition: a male is not to lie with another male in the sexual manner the sentence calls “the lyings of a woman.” It names the act “an abomination,” the verse’s explicit and severe classification.
THE ROOT
תִשְׁכַּב
tishkav from shakav
GROWS FROM
שכב
sh-k-b
to lie down; to lie with
“lie down with” in this verse is tishkav from shakav. The clause uses תִשְׁכַּב (tishkav, “you shall lie”) and מִשְׁכְּבֵי (mishkevei, “lyings of”) from the same root. The KJV’s “as with womankind” smooths over that repetition, so the Hebrew ties its prohibition to a specific act-pattern.
ALSO GROWS
shakhav: to lie down, sleep, or lie with
שָׁכַב
This is the verb in the prohibition; it names the act directly.
mishkav: bed or lying place; a way of lying
מִשְׁכָּב
The plural construct מִשְׁכְּבֵי in this verse comes from the same root as the verb, linking the act to the “lyings” named in the comparison.
THE PATTERN
Scripture states the prohibition as a boundary around male-male intercourse in both legal wording and direct description of conduct.
If a man also lies down with a male as one lies down with a woman, both of them have done a recoiling thing. They shall surely die; their blood is upon them.And in the same way the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their reaching toward one another, men with men working out what has no shape, and receiving in themselves the wage given back for their wandering, which was due.THE THREAD
If a man also lies down with a male as one lies down with a woman, both of them have done a recoiling thing. They shall surely die; their blood is upon them.The paired verse repeats the שכב (sh-k-b, “lie”) root in its two clauses. It then states the death penalty and “their blood shall be upon them,” making the force of the prohibition, and its violence, explicit.
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