What Does Leviticus 18:5 Mean?
So guard my statutes and my judgments, for a human who does them lives in them. I am the LORD.
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
Ye shall therefore keep my statutes, and my judgments: which if a man do, he shall live in them: I am the LORD.THE KEY
The Hebrew pairs watchful keeping with living: the instruction is a place a person inhabits, and life unfolds within it.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you as a person whose life takes shape inside divine instruction. Keeping its words is attentive practice, and the life named here is lived within them, with the LORD as its source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that life can be found only beyond divine instruction; here, life is located within it.
THE ROOT
וָחַי
vaḥay
GROWS FROM
חיה
Live, be alive.
“lives” in this verse is vaḥay. The verb for “shall live” belongs to the same root family as words for the living and for life itself. “Live in them” places life inside the practice of the instruction, not somewhere separate from it.
ALSO GROWS
chai: Living, alive.
חַי
This branch names the living condition itself, linking the verse’s “shall live” to being alive.
chayyim: Life.
חַיִּים
This noun makes the shared root visible: the verse speaks of life through the same seed that forms “live.”
וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם
u-shmartem
GROWS FROM
שמר
Guard, watch over.
“guard” in this verse is u-shmartem. The verb translated “keep” carries the sense of guarding or watching over. Paired with “live in them,” it presents the instruction as something held in attentive practice, within which life unfolds.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: Watcher, keeper, guard.
שֹׁמֵר
The watcher branch makes the attentiveness inside “keep” audible.
mishmeret: Charge, custody, keeping.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
This branch frames keeping as something entrusted to care for, echoing the verse’s call to hold the instruction in view.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places life within responsive participation in divine instruction.
That you may love the LORD your God, and that you may hear and respond to his voice, and that you may cling to him; for he is your life, and the lengthening of your days; that you may settle upon the ground the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.He pointed me, and said to me, Let your heart grasp my words; guard my commands, and live.It is the breath that gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are breath, and they are life.THE THREAD
That you may love the LORD your God, and that you may hear and respond to his voice, and that you may cling to him; for he is your life, and the lengthening of your days; that you may settle upon the ground the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.Leviticus says a person “shall live” in the instruction; Deuteronomy says the LORD “is thy life.” Both use the חיה (chayah) word family, joining life within the instruction to life in the presence of its source.
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