What Does Deuteronomy 28:42 Mean in the King James?
All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume.
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 locust is cast as a new possessor, so the loss reaches the trees that bear the fruit as well as the fruit itself.
THE MEANING
This verse names a loss that reaches both the trees and the fruit they bear. The Hebrew verb translated “consume” carries the sense of taking possession, so the image includes seizure as well as eating. The land’s yield becomes subject to a destructive force.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that whatever is rooted will remain untouched is undone here: even the trees and the fruit of the land are named as vulnerable to seizure.
THE ROOT
יְיָרֵשׁ
yəyarēš
GROWS FROM
ירש
ירש (yārash) means to take possession or inherit; in causative forms, to dispossess or drive out.
“consume” in this verse is yəyarēš. The Hebrew verb יְיָרֵשׁ (yəyarēš, take possession) comes from ירש (yārash), a root that can describe inheriting land or dispossessing its former holder. The locust is pictured not only eating the yield but taking possession of the trees and fruit.
ALSO GROWS
mōrāšāh: Possession, inheritance
מוֹרָשָׁה
This noun makes the root’s sense of taking possession concrete: land and what it bears can be held as an inheritance.
hôrîš: To dispossess, drive out
הוֹרִישׁ
This causative form shows the root’s other side: one possessor’s arrival can mean another’s displacement.
פְּרִי
pərî
GROWS FROM
פרה
פרה (pārāh) means to bear fruit, be fruitful, or increase.
The noun פְּרִי (pərî, fruit) belongs to the root פרה (pārāh, bear fruit, be fruitful). The verse places the land’s visible fruitfulness beside the verb of possession: what the ground brings forth becomes subject to seizure.
ALSO GROWS
pārāh: To bear fruit, be fruitful
פָּרָה
This verb names the act of producing that lies inside the noun “fruit.”
hip̄rāh: Made fruitful, caused to bear fruit
הִפְרָה
This form shows the same root describing fruitfulness brought about in the land.
THE PATTERN
The locust’s devastation reaches from the fruit to the trees and fields that sustain its growth.
For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field, through all the land of Egypt.That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.THE THREAD
And he said unto him, I am the LORD that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it.The same root ירש (yārash, take possession or inherit) describes land given as an inheritance here and the locust taking possession of trees and fruit in Deuteronomy 28:42. The root holds inheritance and dispossession together, revealing the verse’s loss as the reversal of land held as possession.
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