What Does Leviticus 19:31 Mean?
Do not turn your faces to those who speak from the pit, nor seek the ones who know, to be soiled by them; I am the LORD your God.
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
Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.THE KEY
Hebrew calls the wizard a “knower,” making the warning about where you seek knowledge.
THE MEANING
Your attention has direction: when you turn toward hidden practitioners to seek knowledge, the verse says that contact can leave you defiled. Its warning reaches beyond curiosity to the source you trust for insight, while its closing words speak in the present: “I am the LORD your God.”
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that access to hidden knowledge is spiritually neutral, or that seeking it leaves the seeker untouched.
THE ROOT
יִדְּעֹנִים
yiddeʿonim
GROWS FROM
ידע
know, perceive, recognize
“the ones who know” in this verse is yiddeʿonim. The Hebrew term is linked to ידע (yādaʿ, “to know”), naming the wizard as a “knower.” The verse thus brings the pursuit of knowledge itself into view: it asks where the reader turns to know and perceive.
ALSO GROWS
yādaʿ: to know, perceive, recognize
יָדַע
This verb shares the root and makes the term for a wizard part of the language of knowing.
daʿat: knowledge, understanding
דַּעַת
This noun shows the same root’s connection to what the reader seeks from the “knower.”
תִּפְנוּ
tifnu
GROWS FROM
פנה
turn, face, turn toward
“Do not turn your faces to” in this verse is tifnu. The Hebrew verb is directional: it describes turning toward someone, not merely holding an opinion about them. Paired with “seek,” it moves from the direction of the reader’s attention to the active pursuit of what these practitioners offer.
ALSO GROWS
pānâ: to turn or face toward
פָּנָה
This verb shares the root and makes “regard” a movement of orientation.
pānîm: face, presence
פָּנִים
This related word gives the turning a concrete image: the face and presence directed toward a source.
THE PATTERN
Scripture frames spiritual seeking as a question of source, contrasting hidden voices with turning toward God and testing what claims to speak.
Or one who binds bindings, or one who asks the familiar spirit, or one who knows, or one who seeks the dead.And when they say to you, Seek to those who have familiar spirits, and to the knowers who chirp and moan, should not a people seek to their God? For the living, to the dead?Beloved, do not lean your weight on every breath, but test the breaths, whether they come out of God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.THE THREAD
And when they say to you, Seek to those who have familiar spirits, and to the knowers who chirp and moan, should not a people seek to their God? For the living, to the dead?Isaiah makes the direction of seeking explicit: the living are asked why they would consult the dead instead of their God. That contrast opens Leviticus’ paired commands, do not turn toward them, do not seek them, as a question about the source from which knowledge is received.
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