What Does Deuteronomy 28:61 Mean in the King James?
Also every sickness, and every plague, which is not written in the book of this law, them will the LORD bring upon thee, until thou be destroyed.
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
What the scroll does not name is still inside the threat, and the threat’s endpoint is destruction.
THE MEANING
You are addressed by a warning whose reach includes every sickness and plague, even those no written list names. It sets that threat on a path ending in destruction. Nothing in the wording makes the unwritten safe.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that an unlisted harm falls outside the warning: the verse explicitly includes what is not written.
THE ROOT
הִשָּׁמְדָךְ
hiššāmedkha
GROWS FROM
שׁמד
שׁמד (shāmad) means to destroy or annihilate.
“destroyed” in this verse is hiššāmedkha. The verse’s endpoint is not merely illness or bodily affliction, but annihilation. The word “until” makes that destruction the stated limit of the threat.
ALSO GROWS
mashmīd: one who destroys; destroyer
מַשְׁמִיד
The same root names the agent of destruction, showing the force directed at the reader.
hashmādāh: destruction; annihilation
הַשְׁמָדָה
This noun names the same root’s ruin, clarifying the severity of the verse’s endpoint.
יַעְלֵם
yaʿălēm
GROWS FROM
עלה
עלה (ʿālāh) means to go up or ascend; its causative form means to bring up.
“bring them upon” in this verse is yaʿălēm. The verse uses the causative of “go up”: the sicknesses are made to come up over the person addressed. The threat is described as movement onto a body, not as a distant abstraction.
ALSO GROWS
ʿālāh: to go up; ascend
עָלָה
This is the basic movement beneath the verse’s causative wording.
heʿĕlāh: to bring up; cause to ascend
הֶעֱלָה
This causative form shows how the root describes something being made to rise or brought upward.
חֳלִי
ḥŏlî
GROWS FROM
חלה
חלה (ḥālāh) means to be sick or become weak.
“sickness” in this verse is ḥŏlî. This root family names both illness and the sick person, so the verse’s reach is bodily and personal. Its “every” extends the threat beyond the illnesses listed in the book.
ALSO GROWS
maḥălāh: disease; illness
מַחֲלָה
This noun from the same root makes sickness a condition that can take many forms.
ḥōleh: a sick person; one who is ill
חוֹלֶה
This branch names the person within the condition, showing the bodily reach of the verse’s warning.
THE PATTERN
Scripture describes judgment as a force that reaches bodies and daily life, not as an abstract verdict.
I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague, that shall consume the eyes, and cause sorrow of heart: and ye shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it.Moreover he will bring upon thee all the diseases of Egypt, which thou wast afraid of; and they shall cleave unto thee.And the first went, and poured out his vial upon the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.THE THREAD
And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.“Bring them up” and “bring them upon” use the causative of the same Hebrew root, עלה (ʿālāh), meaning to go up or ascend. In Exodus, people are brought up out of Egypt; here, sickness is brought upon the reader, the object and direction turn the same movement toward different ends.
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