אָר֕וּר שֹׁכֵ֖ב עִם כָּל בְּהֵמָ֑ה וְאָמַ֥ר כָּל הָעָ֖ם אָמֵֽן
Cursed be he who lies with any manner of animal. All the people shall say, Amen.
World English Bible · Public Domain
Deuteronomy 27:21
Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex) Deuteronomy 27:21 appears in the Hebrew Old Testament. The text above is from the Westminster Leningrad Codex. Each word links to its Strong’s number, a concise gloss, and parsing drawn from the Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible morphology. Click any word for its full Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB) entry.
English Translation
Cursed be he who lies with any manner of animal. All the people shall say, Amen.
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Compare translations 3
The same verse in 3 English versions, stacked beneath the original-language interlinear above. Click any original word for its lexicon entry.
Each is an independent rendering of the whole verse — the interlinear is not word-aligned to these translations.
Highlighted words mark where these versions differ — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment.
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World English Bible Public Domain
Cursed be he who lies with any manner of animal. All the people shall say, Amen.
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King James Version Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
‘Cursed is the one who lies with any beast.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult).
Show all 18 translations
Every available English version of this verse, each an independent rendering of the whole verse.
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World English Bible Public Domain
Cursed be he who lies with any manner of animal. All the people shall say, Amen.
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Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
‘Cursed is he who lies with any animal.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
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Majority Standard Bible Public Domain
‘Cursed is he who lies with any animal.’ And let all the people say, ‘Amen!’
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King James Version Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.
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American Standard Version (1901) Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.
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Revised Version (1885) Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say, Amen.
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Geneva Bible (1599) Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any beast: And all the people shall say: So be it.
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Douay-Rheims (1899) Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any beast: and all the people shall say: Amen.
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Young's Literal Translation Public Domain
`Cursed `is' he who is lying with any beast, -- and all the people have said, Amen.
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Literal Standard Version CC BY-SA 4.0
“Cursed [is] he who is lying with any beast.” And all the people have said, “Amen.”
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Unlocked Literal Bible CC BY-SA 4.0
'May the man be cursed who sleeps with any kind of beast.' Then all the people must say, 'Amen.'
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unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
‘Cursed is the one who lies with any beast.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
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Darby Bible Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast! And all the people shall say, Amen.
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World Messianic Bible Public Domain
‘Cursed is he who lies with any kind of animal.’ All the people shall say, ‘Amen.’
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Webster's Bible Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast: and all the people shall say, Amen.
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Free Bible Version CC BY-SA 4.0
“A curse on anyone who has sex with any animal!” Everyone says “Amen!”
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Bible in Basic English Public Domain
Cursed is he who has sex relations with any sort of beast. And let all the people say, So be it.
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JPS Tanakh (1917) Public Domain
Cursed be he that lieth with any manner of beast. And all the people shall say: Amen.
Literal Standard Version (2020), Covenant Press — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). Unlocked Literal Bible (unfoldingWord) — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org). unfoldingWord Literal Text — © unfoldingWord, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Word-aligned USFM3 via Door43 (git.door43.org/unfoldingWord/en_ult). Free Bible Version, Dr. Jonathan Gallagher — licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API (eBible.org).
Word by word
More ways to search: Search by grammar → Find every occurrence → Compare this word →
Practice this passage: Drill this verse → Learn its vocabulary →
אָמֵֽן
ʼâmên
H543
“truly”
Adverb
- Appears 30× in the Hebrew Bible
- First appears at Numbers 5:22
- Part of Speech
- Adverb
Full BDB Definition
verily, truly, amen, so be it
- אָר֕וּר ʼârar H779 “cursed” Verb, Qal, Participle Passive, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- שֹׁכֵ֖ב shâkab H7901 “lying down” Verb, Qal, Participle Active, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- עִם ʻim H5973 “with” Preposition
- כָּל kôl H3605 “all of” Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct
- בְּהֵמָ֑ה bᵉhêmâh H929 “beast” Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Absolute
- וְאָמַ֥ר ʼâmar H559 “and · to say” Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 3rd Person, Masculine, Singular
- כָּל kôl H3605 “all of” Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Construct
- הָעָ֖ם ʻam H5971 “the · people” Particle, Definite Article + Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute
- אָמֵֽן ʼâmên H543 “truly” Adverb
About this verse
These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →
- 9
- words
- 8
- distinct lemmas
- Pentateuch
- section
Shared distinctive vocabulary
אָמֵֽן truly H543 occurs in 24 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:
Grammatical profile
- 3 verbs
- 4 nouns
- 1 preposition
- 1 adverb
Verb forms
- אָר֕וּר Qal · Participle Passive
- שֹׁכֵ֖ב Qal · Participle Active
- וְאָמַ֥ר Qal · Sequential Perfect
Repetition
A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:
- כָּל all H3605 ×2
Hebrew & Septuagint length
In English translation the verse runs 16 words from the Hebrew and 17 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.
A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.
Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.
In the original languages it is 9 Hebrew tokens and 12 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.
Cross-references
3Topical passages linked to Deuteronomy 27:21 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.
- Leviticus 18:23 "'You shall not lie with any animal to defile yourself with it; neither shall any woman give herself to an animal, to lie down with it: it is a perversion.
- Exodus 22:19 "Whoever has sex with an animal shall surely be put to death.
- Leviticus 20:15 "'If a man lies with an animal, he shall surely be put to death; and you shall kill the animal.
Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).
Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint
The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.
These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.
ἐπικατάρατος ὁ κοιμάω μετά πᾶς κτῆνος καί εἶπον πᾶς ὁ λαός γίγνομαι
Cursed is he that lies with any beast: and all the people shall say, So be it.
LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain
Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →
Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)
The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.
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Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)
לִיט דְיִשְׁכּוּב עִם כָּל בְּעִירָא וְיֵימַר כָּל עַמָא אָמֵן
(no public-domain English translation for this verse)
Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)
לִיט דִמְשַׁמֵשׁ עִם כָּל בְּעִירָא הֲווֹן עַנְיַין כּוּלְהוֹן כַּחֲדָא וְאָמְרִין אָמֵן
Accursed is he who lieth with a beast. And all shall answer together, and say, Amen.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Lesson kit
Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.
Deuteronomy, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 9 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʼâmên (“truly”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.
Discussion questions
- What does “truly” (ʼâmên) contribute to the verse as a whole?
- How does Numbers 5:22, which shares the word «truly», read alongside this verse?
- What does the repetition of “all” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
- These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
- «אָר֕וּר» is a Qal Participle Passive verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
- Compare how The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges and John Gill's Exposition read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?
Things to notice
- This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 12 Greek words.
- These translations choose different wording for 7 words in this verse.
- “all” occurs 2× in this single verse.
- 8 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 9 words in this verse.
Commentary
Notes on Deuteronomy 27:21 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.
Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill's Exposition
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
The Pulpit Commentary
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.