What Does Leviticus 18:9 Mean?
Do not uncover the nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father or the daughter of your mother, whether born in the house or born outside. Do not uncover their 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 sister, the daughter of thy father, or daughter of thy mother, whether she be born at home, or born abroad, even their nakedness thou shalt not uncover.THE KEY
The boundary follows a sister across households: neither shared parentage nor distance makes her nakedness something to uncover.
THE MEANING
This verse marks sexual exposure of a sister as a boundary the reader is not to cross. Whether she shares the father or the mother, and whether she was born at home or elsewhere, the relation remains the same.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a different household or only one shared parent makes this boundary disappear.
THE ROOT
תְגַלֶּה
tegalleh
GROWS FROM
גלה
g-l-h
to uncover, expose, reveal
The verse centers the act of bringing someone into exposure, not simply the family label. This root also yields words for disclosing and being revealed, so English “uncover” carries a wider field of exposure than the single act may suggest.
ALSO GROWS
gillah: revealed, disclosed
גִּלָּה
This form shows the same root at work in bringing what was hidden into view.
niglah: was revealed, appeared
נִגְלָה
The root also describes something becoming exposed or visible, echoing the boundary named in this verse.
THE PATTERN
Kinship establishes a boundary that sexual exposure cannot erase.
Do not draw near to any flesh of your flesh, to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD.Cursed be he who lies with his sister, the daughter of his father or the daughter of his mother. And all the people shall say, Amen.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 he drank of the wine, and was drunk, and he was uncovered in the midst of his tent.The Hebrew verb translated “uncovered” here comes from גלה (galah), the same root as “uncover” in Leviticus 18:9. The shared root makes the act of exposure visible beneath both English verses.
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