What Does Deuteronomy 29:20 Mean?
The LORD will not be willing to release him. For then the burning of the LORD's anger and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and all the curses written in this book will lie down upon him, and the LORD will wipe out his name from under heaven.
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 will not spare him, but then the anger of the LORD and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the LORD shall blot out his name from under heaven.THE KEY
The curse does not merely fall on the man: the Hebrew says it crouches on him, making judgment a settled presence.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now as a stark portrait of a hidden turning becoming an exposed condition: the LORD’s anger flares, the curse settles on the person, and his name is wiped from beneath heaven. The erased name is the person’s shem (שֵׁם, shem), his nature as it is known and remembered, so the judgment reaches identity, not only circumstance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the claim, “I shall have peace,” while a person keeps following the stubbornness of his own heart; this verse says that imagined immunity does not hold.
THE ROOT
וְרָבְצָה
veravtsah
GROWS FROM
רבץ
r-b-ṣ
Crouch, lie down, or settle into a resting place.
“lie down upon” in this verse is veravtsah. The Hebrew verb pictures more than a passing burden: the curse crouches or settles on the person. The same root describes sin crouching at a threshold in Genesis 4:7; here that poised image becomes a settled consequence.
ALSO GROWS
rovetz: Crouching or lying down.
רֹבֵץ
Genesis 4:7 uses this form for sin lying at the door, showing the same root’s image of a force poised to take hold.
mirbats: A resting place, lair, or fold.
מִרְבָּץ
This related noun carries the sense of a place where something settles, illuminating the curse’s arrival as a state that takes hold.
אַף
af
GROWS FROM
אנף
ʾ-n-p̄
The verbal root means to be angry; the related noun אַף names the nose or nostril and also means anger or heat.
“burning of the LORD's anger” in this verse is af. Here af is paired with smoke and jealousy, carrying anger as heat at the nostrils rather than as an abstract verdict. The image makes judgment flare visibly before the verse names the curse settling on the man.
ALSO GROWS
af: Nostril; also anger or heat.
אַף
This is the word translated “anger” in the verse, preserving the bodily image beneath the English rendering.
anaph: To be angry or flare up.
אָנַף
The related verb reveals the movement from nostril to anger: the verse’s smoke belongs to a flare of heat.
קִנְאָתוֹ
qin’ato
GROWS FROM
קנא
q-n-ʾ
Be zealous or burn with jealous ardor.
The noun names an ardor strong enough to join the anger’s smoke, so the verse depicts the LORD’s response as consuming intensity. Together, smoke and jealousy make the anger embodied and immediate.
ALSO GROWS
qin’ah: Jealousy or zeal.
קִנְאָה
This noun names the ardor expressed in the verse’s image of smoke.
qanna’: Jealous or zealous.
קַנָּא
This related form carries the same force of ardent attachment that underlies the verse’s jealousy.
THE PATTERN
What a person harbors or sows takes outward form and produces a consequence that can be seen.
If you do well, will you not be lifted up? And if you do not do well, falling short crouches at the door. Its reaching is toward you, and you shall rule over it.Let them be wiped out of the scroll of the living, and let them not be inscribed with the aligned.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
If you do well, will you not be lifted up? And if you do not do well, falling short crouches at the door. Its reaching is toward you, and you shall rule over it.Deuteronomy 29:20 and Genesis 4:7 use the same Hebrew root רבץ (ravats), “crouch, lie down.” In Genesis, sin crouches at the door; here the curse lies on the man, moving the image from a force poised at the threshold to a settled consequence.
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