What Does Deuteronomy 32:24 Mean in the King James?
They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust.
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 threat escalates from conditions that consume them to beast teeth and serpent venom explicitly sent against them.
THE MEANING
This verse names total bodily exposure: hunger consumes, burning affliction deepens the assault, and beasts’ teeth and serpent venom close in. It leaves no refuge in the body or the surrounding world; the threat stays violent and direct.
THE ROOT
אֲשַׁלַּח
ʾăšallaḥ
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send forth, dispatch, or release.
The root names movement out from a sender; what is sent can bring restoration or harm. Here the dispatched things are beast teeth and serpent venom, so “send” carries the verse’s deliberate violence without softening it.
ALSO GROWS
shaluaḥ: Sent or dispatched; a sent one.
שָׁלוּחַ
The verse presents the threats as dispatched against them, rather than as dangers that merely happen nearby.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of the water associated with Siloam.
שִׁלֹחַ
The same root can name water sent forth, while here what is sent is teeth and venom; the root describes the sending, and the thing sent determines its effect.
THE PATTERN
Judgment is pictured as converging bodily threats, with deprivation and living attackers consuming life from several directions.
I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the LORD: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.THE THREAD
I will also send wild beasts among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy your cattle, and make you few in number; and your high ways shall be desolate.Both verses use שָׁלַח (shalach, “send forth”) for threats sent against a people. Deuteronomy sharpens the image to beast teeth and serpent venom, making the shared verb feel like the release of a living assault.
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