What Does Leviticus 23:30 Mean?
And whatever living soul does any work in that same day, that very living soul I will make perish from among his people.
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 whatsoever soul it be that doeth any work in that same day, the same soul will I destroy from among his people.THE KEY
The verb beneath “destroy” carries the language of perishing and being lost, and here that loss is a living person’s place among the people.
THE MEANING
On the day set apart for atonement, any work brings God’s stated judgment: the living person is destroyed from among the people. The repeated word nefesh names the living person twice, binding that person’s life to belonging in the community.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It overturns the belief that work is harmless on every day: even one act of work on this day carries the stated consequence of being destroyed from among the people.
THE ROOT
וְהַאֲבַדְתִּי
veha'avadti
GROWS FROM
אבד
Perish, be lost; in the causative form here, cause to perish or destroy.
“make perish” in this verse is veha'avadti. The root also carries the sense of being lost or perishing. Here its causative form places that loss under God’s action, while “from among his people” names its communal edge.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: Perish, be lost.
אָבַד
Psalm 1:6 uses this same root for the way of the ungodly that perishes, placing this judgment within a broader language of loss.
ʾōvēd: One perishing, one near ruin.
אֹבֵד
Deuteronomy 26:5 calls Jacob “a Syrian ready to perish,” using the root for a person in danger of loss as well as for judgment.
THE PATTERN
A set-apart rest is marked by the cessation of ordinary work, so continuing work crosses the boundary of the day.
This is a statute for the ages for you. In the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you bend low your living souls, and do no work at all, whether one of your own land or a sojourner who sojourns among you.You shall guard the sabbath therefore, for it is set apart for you. Every one who pierces it shall surely die. For whoever does any work in it, that living soul shall be cut off from among his people.For the one who has entered into his settling has himself also settled from his own works, as God did from his.THE THREAD
For the LORD perceives the way of the aligned, but the way of the wicked loses its way.“Perish” in Psalm 1:6 uses the same Hebrew root אבד as “destroy” here, though its subject is the way of the ungodly. Leviticus places that loss on a person and names the resulting separation from the people.
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