What Does Deuteronomy 7:15 Mean?
The LORD will turn aside from you all sickness, and he will set none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you know, upon you, but he will set them upon all who hate 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 the LORD will take away from thee all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which thou knowest, upon thee; but will lay them upon all them that hate thee.THE KEY
Healing here is a double movement: sickness is removed from you, while Egypt’s diseases are laid on those who hate you.
THE MEANING
The LORD takes all sickness from you. The evil diseases of Egypt that you know are not set upon you; they are laid upon everyone who hates you. The verse holds your release and violence against your enemies together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that the diseases you know from Egypt must also be laid upon you is undone.
THE ROOT
הֵסִיר
hēsîr
GROWS FROM
סור
sûr
Turn aside or depart; in a causative form, remove or take away.
“turn aside” in this verse is hēsîr. The verb carries the motion of turning aside: sickness is made to depart from you. Healing is described as an active removal, not simply as a change in how illness feels.
ALSO GROWS
sûr: Turn aside; depart.
סוּר
This is the root’s basic motion: what is on you can turn away from you.
hēsîr: Remove; cause to depart.
הֵסִיר
This causative form is used here, showing sickness being actively removed.
חֹלִי
ḥolî
GROWS FROM
חלה
ḥ-l-h
Become weak or sick; be ill.
English gives one label, “sickness”; Hebrew places חֹלִי (ḥolî, sickness) in a family that also names the sick person and the disease. The word’s branches let the verse picture illness as a condition that can depart, not the person’s nature.
ALSO GROWS
ḥōleh: A sick or weakened person.
חוֹלֶה
The same root names the person experiencing the illness, keeping the person distinct from the condition.
maḥălâ: Sickness; disease.
מַחֲלָה
This branch names illness itself, echoing the verse’s promise that sickness is removed.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צרר
ṣ-r-r
Bind, press in, or constrict; the related form צַר (tzar) means narrow or constricted.
Mitzrayim carries the image of tzar, constriction, with the dual ending -ayim: the two narrows. Egypt’s diseases are not laid upon you, so the verse also names release from the constricted place.
ALSO GROWS
tzar: Narrow; tight; constricting.
צַר
This is the narrowness carried in the name Mitzrayim.
mēṣar: A narrow place or strait; distress.
מֵצַר
This branch pictures constriction as a place of distress, deepening the verse’s contrast between Egypt and release.
THE PATTERN
Healing is pictured as affliction being removed or withheld, with wholeness emerging through what no longer rests on you.
When evening had come, they brought to him many held by demons; and he cast out the breaths with a word, and healed all who were sick.And God wipes away every tear from their eyes, and there is no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the first things have gone away.THE THREAD
Who releases all your crookedness; who heals all your sicknesses.The psalm’s word תַּחֲלֻאָיְכִי (taḥalu’ayikhî, “your diseases”) comes from the same חלה (ḥ-l-h, “be weak or sick”) family as Deuteronomy’s חֹלִי (ḥolî, “sickness”). It places those diseases beside healing and release, widening the movement from bodily affliction to what is let go within you.
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