What Does Deuteronomy 29:28 Mean?
And the LORD uprooted them from their soil in the burning of anger, in heat, and in great outburst, and sent them into another land, as it is this day.
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 rooted them out of their land in anger, and in wrath, and in great indignation, and cast them into another land, as it is this day.THE KEY
The verse gives exile two strokes: the people are uprooted from their soil, then cast into another land.
THE MEANING
The verse names judgment as forceful displacement: the people are torn from their own land and thrown into another. Its piled words for anger keep the force behind that displacement in view, while “as it is this day” places the consequence in the present.
THE ROOT
וַיִּתְּשֵׁם
wayyitteshem
GROWS FROM
נתשׁ
n-t-sh
To pull up, tear down, or uproot.
This root gives the removal the feel of physical extraction from the ground. The following verb, “cast,” completes the rupture by flinging the uprooted people elsewhere.
ALSO GROWS
nātaš: To pull up or tear down.
נָתַשׁ
This root form holds together the verse’s image of being torn from the land and the wider image of something forcibly pulled from its place.
lintōš: To pluck up or uproot.
לִנְתּוֹשׁ
Jeremiah uses this form for uprooting a nation, showing that the same word can describe removal on a national scale.
וַיַּשְׁלִכֵם
wayyashlikhem
GROWS FROM
שלך
sh-l-k
To throw or cast.
“sent” in this verse is wayyashlikhem. The verse uses one root for extraction from the homeland and another for throwing the people into a new place. The second verb makes the destination feel imposed, not chosen.
ALSO GROWS
shālak: To throw or cast.
שָׁלַךְ
This is the basic action carried by the verb in the verse.
hišlîkh: To cast or throw down.
הִשְׁלִיךְ
This form preserves the force of being thrown, which the verse applies to the people’s arrival in another land.
אַף
ʾaf
GROWS FROM
אנף
ʾ-n-p
To be angry, with anger pictured through the nostrils’ flare.
The word for anger also names the nose or nostril, giving the verse’s first anger term a bodily, flaring force. Beside wrath and great indignation, the language keeps the intensity of the judgment exposed.
ALSO GROWS
ʾaf: Nose, nostril; anger.
אַף
The same word holds the bodily image and the emotion together, giving anger a vivid, heated edge.
ʾānaf: To be angry.
אָנַף
The verb makes explicit the anger embedded in the noun used in this verse.
THE PATTERN
Scripture depicts judgment as forced displacement: people are uprooted from their homeland and driven into other lands.
And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will pour out a sword after you. Your land shall be emptied, and your cities shall be a dry waste.Until the LORD removed Israel from his face, as he had said by all his servants the prophets. So Israel was stripped bare out of their own land to Assyria until this day.They will fall by the mouth of the sword, and be led away captive into all the nations, and Jerusalem will be trampled by the nations until the seasons of the nations are filled.THE THREAD
In a blink I speak concerning a nation and concerning a kingdom, to uproot, and to tear down, and to make it perish.The phrase “to pluck up” uses לִנְתּוֹשׁ, the same root as “rooted them out” here. Jeremiah extends that image to a nation or kingdom, revealing how the verse’s language of uprooting can encompass an entire people’s place in the land.
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