What Does Deuteronomy 28:32 Mean in the King James?
Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long: and there shall be no might in thine hand.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The eyes spend themselves reaching for the children, while the hand has no strength to change their separation.
THE MEANING
This is the terror of watching your sons and daughters transferred to another people while your gaze keeps reaching for them all day. The longing consumes the eyes, and no strength remains in the hand to change what is happening.
THE ROOT
וְכָלוֹת
wekhalot
GROWS FROM
כלה
kalah
To come to an end, be completed, or be consumed.
“fail” in this verse is wekhalot. The eyes do not merely look unsuccessfully; the word pictures them being spent in the act of looking. This root can describe something reaching completion, so here longing reaches its limit by consuming the one who longs.
ALSO GROWS
kaltah: Was consumed or spent; used of a soul that longs and faints.
כָּלְתָה
Psalm 84:2 uses this root for a soul fainting with longing, giving the eyes’ exhaustion here the same force.
vayekhullu: Were completed or finished.
וַיְכֻלּוּ
The same root can describe things brought to completion; here, what reaches its limit is the eyes’ strength to keep looking.
נְתֻנִים
netunim
GROWS FROM
נתן
natan
To give, set, or place.
“given” in this verse is netunim. The verse names the children as transferred, with another people as recipients: the root’s give-or-place action becomes the mechanism of dispossession. That concrete transfer makes the powerless gaze and hand at the verse’s end more severe.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This is the root’s basic action, made painful here by the children being placed under another people’s possession.
mattanah: A gift; that which is given.
מַתָּנָה
This related noun shares the act of giving, while the verse makes clear that this transfer is a loss, not a gift.
THE PATTERN
Longing is pictured as a reaching that can consume the one who longs.
Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city.My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.My soul fainteth for thy salvation: but I hope in thy word.THE THREAD
My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.The eyes that “fail with longing” and the soul that “fainteth” share the root כלה (kalah), to be consumed or brought to an end. The same word holds the pain of reaching for children who are gone and the ache of longing for the living God.
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