What Does Deuteronomy 28:17 Mean?
Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.
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
Cursed shall be thy basket and thy store.THE KEY
The verse locates deprivation in the whole passage of daily food, from what is gathered to what is prepared.
THE MEANING
The curse reaches the ordinary vessels of sustenance: what is gathered into a basket and what is prepared in a kneading trough. Daily food is not abstract here; the verse names the material place where provision is carried and worked. It speaks of deprivation at the point of gathering and bread-making.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁאֶרֶת
mish'ereth
GROWS FROM
שאר
sha'ar
Remain, be left over.
“kneading bowl” in this verse is mish'ereth. The Hebrew noun מִשְׁאֶרֶת (mish’ereth) means a kneading trough and is associated with שאר (sha’ar), remain or be left over. The verse reaches both what is gathered and what remains in the vessel where dough is prepared.
ALSO GROWS
nish'ar: remains; is left
נִשְׁאַר
This verb from the same root makes the idea of what remains part of the verse’s language of provision.
she'erit: remnant; what remains
שְׁאֵרִית
The word for a remnant carries the same root into the question of what is left after loss.
אָרוּר
arur
GROWS FROM
אָרַר
arar
Curse; place under a curse.
The curse attaches to the household’s vessels of provision, making deprivation concrete in what is carried and prepared for food. The same root also describes the ground as cursed, connecting the conditions of growth with the contents of the household.
ALSO GROWS
arar: to curse
אָרַר
The verb names the action expressed here: the basket and trough are placed under a curse.
me'erah: curse
מְאֵרָה
This noun from the same root shows the curse as a condition that can settle over what sustains daily life.
THE PATTERN
The condition of provision becomes visible in the ordinary acts of gathering, storing, preparing, and eating.
Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.You have sown much and brought in little. You eat, but you are not filled. You drink, but you do not drink your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And the one who earns wages earns them into a pierced pouch.Yet he did not leave himself without witness, doing good, giving you rain from heaven and seasons that bear fruit, filling your hearts with food and gladness.THE THREAD
And to the ground-being, Adam, he said, Because you have heard and responded to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it. Cursed is the ground for your sake; in pain you shall eat from it all the days of your life.The same root אָרַר (arar, to curse) reaches the ground there and the food vessels here. Together, the verses carry the curse from the conditions of growth to what is gathered and kneaded for food.
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