What Does Leviticus 18:7 Mean?
Do not uncover the nakedness of your father, or your mother's. She is your mother. Do not uncover her nakedness.
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
The nakedness of thy father, or the nakedness of thy mother, shalt thou not uncover: she is thy mother; thou shalt not uncover her nakedness.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb for “uncover” also means “reveal,” making this a boundary against turning the parent-child bond into sexual exposure.
THE MEANING
This verse places a sexual boundary at the parent-child bond: your father’s or mother’s nakedness is not yours to expose. It repeats the prohibition around the mother and gives the reason plainly: she is your mother. The relationship itself marks the limit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that belonging to a family grants sexual access to its members; here, kinship is the boundary itself.
THE ROOT
תְגַלֶּה
tegalleh
GROWS FROM
גלה
galah
To uncover, expose, or reveal; in another usage, to go into exile or be carried away.
The English “uncover” can sound merely visual, but גלה (galah, “uncover” or “reveal”) also forms exile language. That shared root gives the exposure here a further shade of rupture: it breaches the place kinship establishes.
ALSO GROWS
gillah: He uncovered or exposed.
גִּלָּה
This verb from the same root makes the act of exposure explicit in the command.
niglah: Was revealed or appeared.
נִגְלָה
Here the root names something becoming visible, showing that “uncover” can carry the sense of disclosure as well as physical exposure.
golah: Exile; people carried away.
גּוֹלָה
This related form carries the root toward displacement, adding a resonance of rupture to the boundary the verse names.
THE PATTERN
Family relation defines sexual boundaries, and the text names their violation as exposure within the household.
Do not draw near to any flesh of your flesh, to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD.And the man who lies down with his father's wife has uncovered his father's nakedness. Both of them shall surely die; their blood is upon them.It is heard commonly that there is the trade of bodies among you, and such trade as is not even named among the nations, that one should hold his father's wife.THE THREAD
And the man who lies down with his father's wife has uncovered his father's nakedness. Both of them shall surely die; their blood is upon them.The Hebrew root גלה (galah, “uncover” or “reveal”) appears in both verses. Leviticus 20:11 makes the family relation explicit and states death as the consequence without softening it.
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