Kiyyem comes from the root qum, to rise or to stand. In its causative form it means to make something stand, to uphold it, to establish it, to confirm it. The sages used a fixed pair of opposites: to nullify a command, l'vatel, or to uphold it, l'kayem. One empties a word of force. The other makes it stand.

This is the word hiding under Matthew 5:17, where Yeshua says He did not come to abolish the Torah and the Prophets but to fulfill them. Read through the courtroom frame, fulfill has often meant finish, and therefore end. Read through the Hebraic frame it means kiyyem: He came to make the Torah stand at last, to live it out loud, to be the one human being who walked the human side of the covenant the whole way through. He did not retire the instruction. He embodied it. It is the same truth Paul guards in Romans 10:4, where telos means goal, the destination the Torah was always running toward, not its termination.