What Does Deuteronomy 31:4 Mean?
The LORD will do to them as he did to Sihon and to Og, kings of the Amorites, and to their land, where he wiped them out.
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 do unto them as he did to Sihon and to Og, kings of the Amorites, and unto the land of them, whom he destroyed.THE KEY
The destruction of Sihon and Og becomes a reusable precedent, turning remembered conquest into the promise of fresh violence.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you with a promise built from precedent: the LORD’s treatment of Sihon and Og is the measure for what is now to be done to the nations before you. Its verb names destruction, so the promise’s assurance and its violence stand together.
THE ROOT
הִשְׁמִיד
hishmîd
GROWS FROM
שׁמד
sh-m-d
To destroy or bring to ruin; in this form, to destroy decisively.
“wiped them out” in this verse is hishmîd. The verse uses the same root for the destruction of Sihon and Og’s land as it does for the promised act ahead. The root makes the earlier conquest a live precedent: the destruction is not presented as a closed event, but as the measure for what follows.
ALSO GROWS
hishmîd: He destroyed; a causative form of שׁמד.
הִשְׁמִיד
This is the form in the verse, naming what was done to the kings’ land directly as destruction.
tashmîd: You shall destroy; a future form of שׁמד.
תַּשְׁמִיד
The same root appears in Deuteronomy 7:24, carrying the remembered destruction forward into another declaration of conquest.
THE PATTERN
The text makes remembered conquest the warrant for another conquest, repeating destruction as a divine action.
And the LORD our God gave him before us, and we struck him, and his sons, and all his people.And we devoted them to destruction, as we did to Sihon king of Heshbon, devoting the men, the women, and the little ones of every city.He strikes many nations and kills strong kings.THE THREAD
He will give their kings into your hand, and you will make their name perish from under the heavens. No one will be able to stand before you until you have destroyed them.The same שׁמד root appears here in “destroy,” now directed at the people’s name from under heaven. The connection carries the force beyond defeating rulers to erasing a people’s name.
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