What Does Leviticus 18:3 Mean?
Do not do the deeds of the land of Egypt, where you settled, and do not do the deeds of the land of Canaan, where I bring you. Do not walk in their statutes.
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
After the doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt, shall ye not do: and after the doings of the land of Canaan, whither I bring you, shall ye not do: neither shall ye walk in their ordinances.THE KEY
The verse distinguishes being moved into a place from being moved by its pattern.
THE MEANING
The verse names the pressure of surrounding customs without equating proximity with identity. Mitzrayim (מִצְרַיִם, Mitzrayim, “the two narrows”) carries the image of constriction; arrival in a new place does not itself create a new way. What the reader walks reveals more than where the reader stands.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that living among a pattern automatically makes that pattern your nature.
THE ROOT
תֵּלֵכוּ
tēlēḵû
GROWS FROM
הלך
Go, walk, move along a path.
“walk” in this verse is tēlēḵû. The verse ends with the concrete motion of walking, turning the customs named before it into a whole direction. Its reach is wider than isolated acts: it names the path a person inhabits.
ALSO GROWS
halakh: to go, walk
הָלַךְ
The same verb root underlies “walk,” keeping the verse’s image grounded in movement.
halikhah: walking, a journey
הֲלִיכָה
A journey is made of steps; the verse presents a way of life as a route one follows.
holekh: one who goes or walks
הוֹלֵךְ
The related form names the one moving along a path, joining the walked way to the person who walks it.
מַעֲשֵׂה
maʿăśeh
GROWS FROM
עשה
Do, make, act.
“deeds” in this verse is maʿăśeh. Hebrew repeats the same root in “doings” and “do,” where English presents a noun and a verb. That repetition links the practices around a person to the actions that could reproduce them.
ALSO GROWS
asah: to do, make
עָשָׂה
This is the verb behind “ye shall not do,” repeated for both lands’ practices.
ma'aseh: deed, work, act
מַעֲשֶׂה
This is the word translated “doings”; its shared root with “do” ties a culture’s acts to the acts a person performs.
וּבְחֻקֹּתֵיהֶם
ûḇəḥuqqōṯêhem
GROWS FROM
חקק
Engrave, inscribe; prescribe or decree.
The word for statutes is linked to the language of inscribing and prescribing. Joined to “walk,” it pictures a person moving within a pattern whose shape has already been set.
ALSO GROWS
choq: a prescribed statute or fixed portion
חֹק
It shows how an inscribed or prescribed limit can become part of the pattern named in the verse.
chuqqah: statute, prescribed custom
חֻקָּה
This is the related form used for the customs the verse says not to walk in.
THE PATTERN
Repeated practices become a path, and scripture names that path as something a person can refuse to walk.
You shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do as their works do. But you shall tear them down and shatter their standing stones.Flourishing is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of those who miss the mark, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers.In these you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the breath that now works in the children of the unleaning.THE THREAD
And you shall not walk in the statutes of the nation that I send out from before you, for they did all these things, and so I was sickened by them.It repeats תֵּלֵכוּ (tēlēḵû, “you shall walk”), from הלך (halakh, “go, walk”), making the shared path explicit. The verse also names the force of that path without softening it: these practices provoke abhorrence.
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