What Does Leviticus 20:13 Mean?
If a man also lies down with a male as one lies down with a woman, both of them have done a recoiling thing. They shall surely die; their blood is upon them.
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
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.THE KEY
Hebrew repeats one root to name the sexual act and another to make its death sentence emphatic, binding the specified conduct to an explicit penalty.
THE MEANING
This statute states a categorical prohibition: a man who lies sexually with a male as with a woman commits what it calls an abomination; both participants are sentenced to death, and the text places the blood on them. It speaks with the force of an execution clause, not as a symbolic warning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that the penalty is merely social disapproval: the verse names death and locates the blood on the condemned.
THE ROOT
מוֹת יוּמָת
mōt yûmāt
GROWS FROM
מות
m-w-t
to die; death
“shall surely die” in this verse is mōt yûmāt. מוֹת יוּמָת (mōt yûmāt, “shall surely be put to death”) repeats the death root as an infinitive absolute followed by a Hophal verb, intensifying certainty. The sentence then makes death bodily and assigned: “their blood shall be upon them.”
ALSO GROWS
māvet: death
מָוֶת
The noun names the same outcome carried by the verb, making the result concrete.
hēmît: to kill; cause to die
הֵמִית
This causative form shows the root describing an agent bringing about death, the force behind a legal order to execute.
יִשְׁכַּב
yishkav
GROWS FROM
שכב
sh-k-b
to lie down; recline
“lies down with a male” in this verse is yishkav. יִשְׁכַּב (yishkav, “he lies”) is followed by מִשְׁכְּבֵי (mishkevei, “lyings” or “bed acts”), repeating the same root through verb and noun. English retains “lie” and “lieth,” while the Hebrew noun echoes that root in the comparison itself.
ALSO GROWS
mishkāv: bed; lying; sexual lying
מִשְׁכָּב
The noun form shows how this root can name both a place of lying and the act associated with it.
shōkhēv: one lying; one who lies down
שׁוֹכֵב
This participle names a person by the same act, showing the root can shift from action to the person performing it.
THE PATTERN
Torah statutes name prohibited conduct and explicitly assign death as its legal consequence.
He who strikes a man so that he dies is surely put to death.And the man who commits adultery with another man's wife, and the one who commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely die.If a man is found lying down with a woman who belongs to a husband, then both of them shall die, the man who lies with the woman and the woman. So you shall burn out the evil from Israel.THE THREAD
He who strikes a man so that he dies is surely put to death.The Hebrew death formula mōt yûmāt (“shall surely be put to death”) also appears in this statute on homicide. The shared construction reveals the same explicit legal force while leaving the acts named in the two verses distinct.
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