What Does Leviticus 18:23 Mean?
Do not lie down with any beast, to soil yourself with it. Do not let any woman stand before a beast to lie down with it. It is a mixing.
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 lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto: it is confusion.THE KEY
The word rendered “confusion” carries the image of mixing, so the verse names sex with an animal as a collapse of the human–animal boundary.
THE MEANING
The verse forbids sexual intercourse between a human and an animal, naming that crossing tevel, a sexual confusion. It states the prohibition for both a man and a woman.
THE ROOT
תֵּבֶל
tevel
GROWS FROM
בלל
The word is traditionally connected to בלל (balal), “to mix, mingle, or confound”; tevel names sexual confusion or violation.
“a mixing” in this verse is tevel. Here, tevel does not mean ordinary uncertainty; it names sexual disorder. Its connection to balal, “to mix or confound,” frames the act as a crossing in which human and animal bodies are joined.
ALSO GROWS
belulah: mixed, blended, as flour mixed with oil
בְּלוּלָה
Leviticus 2:4 uses this form for flour mixed with oil; the concrete sense of mingling helps illuminate the image behind tevel.
balal: to mix, mingle, or confound
בָּלַל
Genesis 11:7 uses this verb for confounding language; here, the related word tevel names a prohibited sexual crossing as confusion.
THE PATTERN
The text holds human and animal kinds distinct and names sexual crossing between them as a grave violation.
And God made the beast of the earth after its kind, and the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing upon the ground after its kind. And God saw that it was good.Whoever lies down with a beast shall surely be put to death.Cursed be he who lies with any beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.THE THREAD
And if a man lies down with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely die. They have made a mixture; their blood is upon them.“Confusion” here is the same Hebrew word, תֵּבֶל (tevel, sexual confusion or violation), used in the current verse. Its repetition shows that the term names a prohibited sexual crossing, not merely a feeling of mental confusion.
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