What Does Deuteronomy 28:18 Mean?
Cursed shall be the fruit of your womb, and the fruit of your ground, the young of your herd, and the flocks of your sheep.
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 the fruit of thy body, and the fruit of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep.THE KEY
The curse reaches every source of increase at once: body, soil, cattle, and sheep.
THE MEANING
When a life is under curse, the damage reaches bodily generation, the yield of soil, and the offspring of herds and flocks. Intimate life and ordinary provision stand under the same condition, showing how thoroughly every source of increase can be struck.
THE ROOT
פְּרִי
peri
GROWS FROM
פ־ר־ה
p-r-h
To bear fruit, become fruitful, increase.
The same noun פְּרִי (peri, fruit or produce) names both the body’s fruit and the land’s fruit, linking human generation and harvest as one field of increase. The curse reaches the capacity of living sources to bring forth.
ALSO GROWS
parah: To bear fruit; to be fruitful.
פָּרָה
The verb makes the root’s movement clear: fruit is what a living source brings forth.
Efrayim: Ephraim; a name associated with being made fruitful.
אֶפְרַיִם
The name carries the same fruitfulness root, showing how increase can become part of a person’s nature and future.
אָרוּר
arur
GROWS FROM
א־ר־ר
ʾ-r-r
To curse; to place under a curse.
“cursed” in this verse is arur. The verse lays the curse across repeated forms of increase: body, soil, cattle, and sheep. The same root can fall directly on the ground, joining the curse to the sources that sustain life.
ALSO GROWS
arurah: Cursed, in the feminine form.
אֲרוּרָה
In Genesis 3:17, this form describes the ground as cursed, echoing the way the curse here reaches the land’s fruit.
me'erah: Curse; a condition of being cursed.
מְאֵרָה
This noun from the same root shows the curse as a condition that can settle over a person’s provision.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes a life’s condition visible through what its living sources can or cannot bring forth.
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.As for Ephraim, their weight shall fly away like a bird, from birth, from the belly, and from the conceiving.And again he prayed, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth sprouted her fruit.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.Genesis 3:17 shares the curse-root א־ר־ר (ʾ-r-r, to curse) and the ground word אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground or soil) with this verse. There the curse rests on the ground; here its reach widens to the body’s fruit and the increase of herds and flocks.
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