What Does Leviticus 20:19 Mean?
You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother's sister, or of your father's sister, for he has uncovered his own flesh; they shall bear their crookedness.
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 thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of thy mother’s sister, nor of thy father’s sister: for he uncovereth his near kin: they shall bear their iniquity.THE KEY
The verse names the act with two different Hebrew verbs of exposure, tying sexual violation directly to the close kinship it breaches.
THE MEANING
Sexual access to a mother’s sister or father’s sister is named as uncovering the nakedness of close kin, making kinship part of the violation itself. Those who cross that boundary bear the crookedness of the act.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Family closeness does not make sexual access harmless or erase the boundary.
THE ROOT
תְגַלֵּה
tegalleh
GROWS FROM
גלה
To uncover, expose, reveal.
The verse pairs תְגַלֵּה (tegalleh, uncover), from גלה, with הֶעֱרָה (he’erah, uncover or expose), from עָרָה (arah, bare or uncover). Two different Hebrew verbs converge on the exposure of a close relative, keeping the act bodily and relational rather than reducing it to an abstract offense.
ALSO GROWS
galah: To uncover or reveal.
גָּלָה
This basic form shows uncovering as making what is concealed visible; here it names sexual exposure.
niglah: To be revealed or become visible.
נִגְלָה
The same root holds both the act of uncovering and the state of being exposed.
יִשָּׂאוּ
yissa'u
GROWS FROM
נשא
To lift, carry, or bear.
This root holds lifting and carrying together. In the final clause, the wrong is something the people who commit it bear, leaving its consequence attached to the act.
ALSO GROWS
nose: Carrying or bearing; a bearer.
נֹשֵׂא
This participle makes the burden-bearing in the final clause an active relation to the wrong.
nasi: A leader or chief, traditionally linked with being raised up.
נָשִׂיא
This related form carries the root’s sense of elevation, showing the wider range from lifting up to bearing.
THE PATTERN
Sexuality is bound to kinship and bodily integrity, so sexual acts carry relational consequences.
Do not draw near to any flesh of your flesh, to uncover nakedness. I am the LORD.Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother, and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.Flee the selling of bodies. Every shortcoming that a person does is outside the body; but the one who sells bodies misses the mark against his own body.THE THREAD
The living soul that is missing shall die. The son shall not bear the crookedness of the father, nor shall the father bear the crookedness of the son; the alignment of the aligned shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him.The same Hebrew verb נָשָׂא (nasa, bear or carry) appears with עָוֹן (avon, iniquity or crookedness). Ezekiel makes the burden personal: wrongdoing does not pass from parent to child, which sharpens Leviticus’s closing words about bearing iniquity.
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