What Does Leviticus 20:14 Mean?
And if a man takes a wife and her mother, it is a plotted thing. They shall be burned with fire, both he and they, so that no plotted thing is in your midst.
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
And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you.THE KEY
The Hebrew word zimmah frames the sentence: the offense is named before the sentence and named again as what the community is meant to be without.
THE MEANING
The verse names taking both a wife and her mother as zimmah, a prohibited sexual union, and prescribes that all involved be burned with fire. Its stated aim is that this offense not remain “among you.”
THE ROOT
זִמָּה
zimmah
GROWS FROM
זמם
To devise, plan, or purpose.
“a plotted thing” in this verse is zimmah. The noun zimmah is related to zamam, “to devise or plan,” though the verse’s context specifies the sexual offense it names. Repeating zimmah at the beginning and end makes that named offense the frame around the decree and its stated communal purpose.
ALSO GROWS
zamam: To devise, plan, or purpose.
זָמַם
This verb carries the seed of intention behind zimmah, showing a connection English’s single word “wickedness” does not expose.
mezimmah: A plan or device; also discretion, as in Proverbs 1:4.
מְזִמָּה
This related word can describe prudent planning, showing that the root’s idea of devising is broader than wrongdoing; the context gives zimmah its severe sense here.
THE PATTERN
Sexual relations that cross a kinship boundary are named as a communal matter, not left as private conduct.
Do not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter. Do not take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to uncover their nakedness. They are her flesh. It is a plotted thing.Cursed be he who lies with his father's wife, for he uncovers his father's wing. 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
Do not uncover the nakedness of a woman and her daughter. Do not take her son's daughter, or her daughter's daughter, to uncover their nakedness. They are her flesh. It is a plotted thing.Both verses use זִמָּה (zimmah, a devised offense or illicit sexual conduct) for a union that crosses a family boundary. Leviticus 18:17 makes the shared term visible in another prohibition, showing that “wickedness” names a specific category of sexual violation here.
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