What Does Deuteronomy 28:35 Mean?
The LORD shall strike you in the knees, and in the legs, with a harmful boil that cannot be healed, from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head.
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
The LORD shall smite thee in the knees, and in the legs, with a sore botch that cannot be healed, from the sole of thy foot unto the top of thy head.THE KEY
The verse strikes the knees, the body-part whose Hebrew root also names blessing, then stretches the wound from foot to crown.
THE MEANING
This verse names bodily affliction as judgment: the strike lands in the knees and legs, and the sore reaches from foot to crown. No part lies outside its reach, and the wound is described as beyond healing.
THE ROOT
בִּרְכַּיִם
birkayim
GROWS FROM
ברך
b-r-k
Knee, bending or kneeling; the same root also means bless.
The Hebrew word for knees and the verb for blessing share the three consonants ברך (b-r-k), joining bodily bending and blessing in one word-family. Here, the place of bending is where the blow lands, so the blessing-word echoes inside the verse’s image of affliction.
ALSO GROWS
berekh: knee
בֶּרֶךְ
This singular form names the body-part struck in the verse’s opening image.
barakh: bless
בָּרַךְ
The same root makes blessing an echo within the word for the knees.
berakhah: blessing
בְּרָכָה
This noun carries the same root into the idea of blessing itself.
יַכְּכָה
yakkekha
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
Strike, smite, beat.
“strike” in this verse is yakkekha. This root names the striking and also appears in words for the blow that remains. It appears again in Job’s body-wide affliction, linking the verses through the act of striking as well as the extent of the wound.
ALSO GROWS
makkah: blow, wound, plague
מַכָּה
This noun shows how the root of striking also names the affliction produced by a blow.
mukkeh: stricken, wounded
מֻכֶּה
This form describes the person left bearing the strike.
לְהֵרָפֵא
leherafe
GROWS FROM
רפא
r-p-ʾ
Heal, restore.
“healed” in this verse is leherafe. The healing verb comes from רפא (rapha, heal), whose opening consonants echo רפה (raphah, release or let the hands drop). This verse closes that possibility by describing the wound as beyond healing.
ALSO GROWS
rophe: healer, physician
רֹפֵא
The root names the one who brings healing, a possibility this verse declares absent.
refu'ah: healing, cure
רְפוּאָה
This noun names the healing the verse says cannot reach the wound.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can make affliction’s full reach visible by tracing it across the body from foot to head.
So went forth the Adversary from the face of the LORD, and struck Job with a harmful boil from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.From the sole of the foot to the head there is no unbroken place in it, but wounds, welts, and fresh blows. They have not been closed, nor bound up, nor softened with oil.And it happened, while he was in one of the towns, and look, a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell upon his face and begged him, saying, Lord, if you will, you are able to make me clean.THE THREAD
So went forth the Adversary from the face of the LORD, and struck Job with a harmful boil from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.Both verses use the Hebrew strike-root נכה (n-k-h, strike) and describe an affliction stretching from foot to head. Deuteronomy names the LORD as the striker, while Job names Satan; the shared root and bodily image do not erase that difference.
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