What Does Leviticus 19:14 Mean?
You shall not curse the deaf, nor set a stumbling block before the blind; but you shall stand in awe of your God. 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
Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.THE KEY
A person’s inability to hear the curse or see the trap never makes them invisible to God.
THE MEANING
Your words can target someone who cannot hear them, and a hidden obstacle can target someone who cannot see it. The verse places both forms of harm beside reverence for God, whose presence does not depend on what another person can perceive. What that person cannot detect is still seen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that harm does not matter if its target cannot detect it.
THE ROOT
מִכְשׁוֹל
mikshol
GROWS FROM
כשל
To stumble, totter, or fall; in a causative form, to make someone stumble.
“stumbling block” in this verse is mikshol. The Hebrew word for the obstacle and the root for stumbling belong to one verbal family: the thing placed in someone’s way is named by the fall it can cause. The verse makes the hidden trap and its consequence part of the same image.
ALSO GROWS
kashal: To lose one’s footing or fall.
כָּשַׁל
This is the action the stumbling block can bring about.
hikhshil: To make someone stumble or fall.
הִכְשִׁיל
This causative form makes clear that placing the obstacle involves setting another person’s fall in motion.
תְקַלֵּל
teqallel
GROWS FROM
קלל
To be light or slight; in a causative form, to make light of or diminish.
The verb for cursing grows from a root that also means to be light or make light. A curse therefore carries the image of diminishing someone, treating them as insignificant.
ALSO GROWS
qalal: To be slight or to treat something as light.
קָלַל
This root sense reveals the diminishing image carried by the verb for cursing.
qelalah: A spoken curse or imprecation.
קְלָלָה
This noun shares the root of the prohibited act of cursing the deaf.
THE PATTERN
God’s regard for people reaches precisely where another person can exploit what they cannot perceive.
Cursed be he who makes the blind go astray on the road. And all the people shall say, Amen.Open your mouth for the mute, in the judgment of all who pass away.So let us no longer judge one another, but judge this instead, that no one sets a stone to strike against, or a trap, in his brother's way.THE THREAD
So let us no longer judge one another, but judge this instead, that no one sets a stone to strike against, or a trap, in his brother's way.Leviticus forbids placing a stumbling block before someone who cannot see it; Romans names the wider pattern of setting an obstacle in another person’s way. Both verses make the harm visible by showing how one person’s act can become another person’s fall.
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