What Does Deuteronomy 28:51 Mean?
And he shall eat the fruit of your cattle, and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; which shall not leave you grain, new wine, or fresh oil, or the young of your herd, or the flocks of your sheep, until he has destroyed you.
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
And he shall eat the fruit of thy cattle, and the fruit of thy land, until thou be destroyed: which also shall not leave thee either corn, wine, or oil, or the increase of thy kine, or flocks of thy sheep, until he have destroyed thee.THE KEY
The Hebrew calls both herd offspring and harvest “fruit,” so the invasion consumes not only provisions but the increase that could replace them.
THE MEANING
A force consumes the yield of your land and herds, including their increase, until it destroys you. The taking reaches beyond what sustains you now to the sources of continued sustenance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that devastation stops at what has already been gathered falls away: the verse names the taking of future increase and the destruction of the people themselves.
THE ROOT
פְּרִי
perī
GROWS FROM
פרה
p-r-h
Bear fruit, become fruitful, increase.
“fruit of your cattle” in this verse is perī. The same Hebrew word names the fruit of the cattle and the fruit of the land. It gathers animal increase and crop yield into one picture: what is being eaten includes the sources of future provision.
ALSO GROWS
pārāh: Bear fruit, be fruitful, increase.
פָּרָה
The verb shows the living increase contained in the cattle’s “fruit.”
hiphrāh: Make fruitful, cause to increase.
הִפְרָה
This causative form shows the same root reaching from fruit itself to the increase that produces it.
אָכַל
ʾākal
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
Eat, consume.
“eat” in this verse is ʾākal. The root names both eating and what is eaten. Here, the invader’s consumption takes in the whole base of survival: the land’s yield and the herds’ increase.
ALSO GROWS
maʾăkhāl: Food, that which is eaten.
מַאֲכָל
The noun makes explicit the provision that the verb consumes.
ʾokhlāh: Food, provision for eating.
אָכְלָה
This branch connects the act of eating to the sustenance the verse says is taken away.
הַאֲבִידוֹ
haʾăvīdō
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾ-b-d
Perish, be lost; in the causative, cause to perish.
The first “destroyed” uses shamad (שָׁמַד, shāmad: destroy or be exterminated); the final “destroy thee” uses abad (אבד, ʾābad: perish or be lost) in a causative form. The English repeats one verb, while the Hebrew moves from destruction to the attacker causing you to perish.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: Perish, be lost.
אָבַד
This is the root’s basic sense, naming the end the closing phrase brings about.
ʾăvaddōn: Destruction, perishing.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This noun gives the root’s movement toward ruin a name of its own.
THE PATTERN
When predatory power consumes a people’s living yield, the loss reaches the sources of future sustenance and the people themselves.
The fruit of your ground, and all your toil, shall a nation you have never known devour. And you shall be only pressed and crushed all the days.And they camped against them, and ruined the yield of the land, until you come to Gaza, and left no living for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor donkey.The thief comes only to steal, and to slaughter, and to make perish. I came that they might have life, and have it overflowing.THE THREAD
The fruit of your ground, and all your toil, shall a nation you have never known devour. And you shall be only pressed and crushed all the days.Both verses use the language of eating for an outside power consuming the land’s yield. Deuteronomy 28:51 extends that image from crops and labor to herd increase and flocks, carrying the taking through to destruction.
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