What Does Numbers 30:13 Mean?
Every vow, and every sworn binding to bend low her living soul, her husband may cause it to stand, or her husband may break it.
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
Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void.THE KEY
The binding oath is a bond, but this verse gives her husband the power to decide whether it holds.
THE MEANING
The verse puts before you a structure in which a woman’s vow is not finally her own: her husband may establish it or make it void. Her act of binding herself and his authority over that bond remain visible together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that her vow’s force belongs only to the woman who makes it.
THE ROOT
אִסָּר
issar
GROWS FROM
אסר
To bind, tie, or restrain.
“sworn binding” in this verse is issar. The word translated “binding oath” carries the seed of binding and restraint. English can make “oath” sound like a solemn utterance; this root makes its force tangible as a bond that constrains, and the verse places the power to keep or cancel that bond with her husband.
ALSO GROWS
asur: Bound; forbidden.
אָסוּר
This same root describes what is bound or prohibited, showing how an oath can narrow what the speaker may do afterward.
asir: Captive; prisoner.
אֲסִיר
The root also names one held by bonds, making the oath’s restraint concrete rather than merely ceremonial.
THE PATTERN
Scripture treats an oath as speech that creates an ongoing bond and obligation.
In whose eyes the despised one is spurned, yet he gives weight to those in awe of the LORD. He swears to his own harm, and does not shift.When you vow a vow to God, do not linger to make it whole. For there is no delight in the thick-headed. Make whole what you have vowed.Before all things, my brethren, do not swear, neither by heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no, lest you fall under judgment.THE THREAD
And he turned away from them and wept. Then he returned to them, spoke with them, and took Simeon from among them, and bound him before their eyes.The verb אָסַר (ʾāsar, “to bind”) here shares its root with אִסָּר (issar, “binding oath”). Genesis shows a person physically bound; Numbers uses the same root for a vow whose force another person can confirm or annul.
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