What Does Leviticus 21:20 Mean?
Or hunched, or made small, or one with a blemish in his eye, or scaled, or scabbed, or one crushed in his stones.
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
Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken;THE KEY
Here the boundary around priestly service is drawn on the body itself: visible conditions and bodily injury determine access to the role.
THE MEANING
This line names bodily conditions that restrict a man’s access to priestly service. It does not say these conditions come from wrongdoing; the boundary is attached to bodily form and injury. The restriction is stark and specific: physical difference determines access to this role.
THE ROOT
תבלל
teballul
GROWS FROM
בלל
balal
to mix, mingle, or confound
“blemish” in this verse is teballul. The Hebrew term is associated with the root meaning “to mix,” giving the eye’s spot a sense of something mingled into its field. The verse still names a bodily condition; this root does not make it a moral flaw.
ALSO GROWS
balal: to mix, mingle, or confound
בָּלַל
This verb is the root’s basic action, showing the shared seed behind the term for the eye condition.
belil: mixed fodder or mash
בְּלִיל
This noun uses the same root for blended feed, showing mixing as a concrete process in the word family.
דַּק
daq
GROWS FROM
דקק
daqaq
to be thin or fine, or to crush something into fine pieces
“made small” in this verse is daq. The word rendered “dwarf” carries the sense of thin, small, or fine; its root also yields a verb meaning to crush or make fine. This is language of size applied directly to a body, with no action or moral failure named as its cause.
ALSO GROWS
daq: thin, fine, or small
דַּק
This adjective is the form rendered “dwarf” here, placing the description in the language of bodily size.
daqaq: to crush or make fine
דָּקַק
This verb extends the same root’s sense of making small or fine, clarifying the physical scale carried by the word family.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats bodily conditions as relevant to particular kinds of access while also showing people with disabilities sharing in a table’s provision.
He eats the bread of his God, from the most set-apart, and from the set-apart.So Mephibosheth settled in Jerusalem, for he ate always at the king's table, and was struck in both his feet.But when you make a feast, call the emptied, the maimed, the lame, the blind.THE THREAD
He eats the bread of his God, from the most set-apart, and from the set-apart.The next verse specifies that the person described may eat holy food. The boundary is real, but its scope is priestly service; it does not remove every share in sacred provision.
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