What Does Deuteronomy 28:68 Mean?
And the LORD will turn you back to Egypt in ships, by the way I spoke to you, that you will see it no more. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies as servants and as maidservants, and there will be no buyer.
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 the LORD shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships, by the way whereof I spake unto thee, Thou shalt see it no more again: and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen, and no man shall buy you.THE KEY
Egypt is the narrow place of utter dispossession: you are put up for sale, yet no buyer appears.
THE MEANING
You are carried back into constriction by ships, placed among enemies, and held in bondage as a bondman or bondwoman. The sale brings no buyer, leaving you without a human purchaser to claim you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that being sold necessarily means someone will claim you or take you into another household: here, no one buys you.
THE ROOT
מִצְרַיִם
Mitsrayim
GROWS FROM
מצר
metsar
Narrow place, strait; constriction.
Mitzrayim carries the consonants of מֵצַר (metsar), “a narrow place,” and its ending evokes the dual: the two narrows. “Egypt again” thus carries the force of returning to constriction, now enacted through ships, enemy hands, and bondage.
ALSO GROWS
metsar: A narrow place or strait; a place of distress.
מֵצַר
This is the narrow-place image carried in Egypt’s name and echoed in the verse’s return to captivity.
Mitsrayim: Egypt; traditionally heard here as the two narrows.
מִצְרַיִם
The name gathers the passage’s return, confinement, and bondage into one image.
וְהִתְמַכַּרְתֶּם
vehitmakartem
GROWS FROM
מכר
makhar
Sell; transfer through a sale.
“sell yourselves” in this verse is vehitmakartem. The sold person and the sale grow from the same root, placing bondage in the language of transfer between hands. Yet the verse immediately exposes the rupture in that transaction: the sale is spoken, and no buyer takes you.
ALSO GROWS
makhur: Sold.
מָכוּר
This form keeps the focus on the person handed over in the sale.
mimkar: A sale; something sold.
מִמְכָּר
The noun names the transaction itself, which the next phrase leaves without a buyer.
קֹנֶה
qoneh
GROWS FROM
קנה
qanah
Buy, acquire, possess.
“buyer” in this verse is qoneh. “Buy” comes from קנה (qanah), the root of acquiring or possessing. Set beside the sale-root מכר (makhar), “sell,” the verse separates the two sides of a transaction: the selling happens, while no one appears to acquire you.
ALSO GROWS
qinyan: Acquisition or property.
קִנְיָן
It shows the possession implied by buying, the action absent from the verse’s final phrase.
miqneh: Possessions or livestock.
מִקְנֶה
This branch makes acquisition concrete: the buyer takes something into possession, but no buyer takes you.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names captivity as constriction and deliverance as being brought out into spaciousness.
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.So if the Son sets you free, you will be truly free.THE THREAD
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.The Hebrew opening, מִן־הַמֵּצַר (min-hammetsar, “from the narrow place”), shares the three consonants מצר with Mitzrayim’s narrowing name. Deuteronomy turns you back into the narrow place; the psalm opens the opposite movement, as the LORD sets the speaker in a large place.
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