What Does Deuteronomy 28:56 Mean in the King James?
The tender and delicate woman among you, which would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tenderness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom, and toward her son, and toward her daughter,
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 “evil eye” shows scarcity narrowing regard until even the people closest to her become part of the struggle to survive.
THE MEANING
This verse holds a brutal possibility in the present: devastating scarcity can break through a life marked by softness and turn a woman’s gaze against her husband and children. The surrounding verse names siege hunger as the pressure, carrying the image into the horror of a mother consuming her own child. The text does not spare what constriction can do to care.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that tenderness or refinement makes a person immune to what extreme deprivation can do.
THE ROOT
רָעָה
ra'ah
GROWS FROM
רעע
ra'a
To be bad, harmful, or evil.
In the phrase “her eye shall be evil,” רעע makes evil a quality of her seeing, not just a label for her character. The same “evil eye” image elsewhere describes refusing aid to a poor brother; here, deprivation turns that gaze toward a husband and children.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil, harmful.
רַע
This adjective names the harmful quality carried by the gaze in the verse.
roaʿ: Evil, harm, wickedness.
רֹעַ
This noun shows the root can name harm itself, not only a judgment about someone’s character.
THE PATTERN
The “evil eye” closes regard around what is seen, turning need into withholding and darkness.
Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto thee.Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats:But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!THE THREAD
Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand; and thine eye be evil against thy poor brother, and thou givest him nought; and he cry unto the LORD against thee, and it be sin unto thee.The Hebrew repeats the same “evil eye” construction, עֵינְךָ רָעָה, and connects it to refusing provision. That link opens Deuteronomy 28:56 as a portrait of scarcity contracting regard until even the nearest bonds are caught in its grip.
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