What Does Leviticus 18:27 Mean in the King James?
(For all these abominations have the men of the land done, which were before you, and the land is defiled;)
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 land is not backdrop here; the community’s acts leave a condition for the shared ground to bear.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the reader now: what a community practices reaches beyond the people doing it and marks the ground they share. The land bears the consequence of these acts; it is part of the reality they change.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a community’s choices affect only the individuals involved and leave the shared world untouched.
THE ROOT
וַתִּטְמָא
vattitma
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
To be or become unclean; in causative forms, to make unclean.
The Hebrew verb presents the land as becoming unclean, a condition its inhabitants’ acts bring about. English can make “defiled” sound like a label; the root shows a change in the land’s condition.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmēʾ: Unclean.
טָמֵא
The related adjective names the condition the land enters in this verse.
ṭumʾāh: Uncleanness or impurity.
טֻמְאָה
This noun makes the root’s condition a state that can characterize a place, not only a person.
ṭimmēʾ: To make unclean or defile.
טִמֵּא
This related verb makes explicit how actions can bring about the condition named here.
עָשׂוּ
asū
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿ-ś-h
To do, make, or accomplish.
“done” in this verse is asū. This root carries both doing and making. The verse places the people’s actions beside the land’s changed condition, linking what they do with what the shared ground becomes.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāśāh: To do or make.
עָשָׂה
The root verb holds action and making together, sharpening the link between conduct and consequence.
maʿăśeh: A deed, work, or thing made.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This related noun can name both an act and its product, echoing the verse’s movement from what people do to the condition that follows.
THE PATTERN
Human conduct can mark a reality larger than the person acting: bodies, land, and community bear its effects.
So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood.And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.THE THREAD
And the land is defiled: therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants.This verse uses the same Hebrew root for “defiled,” then shows the land’s response in motion: it vomits out its inhabitants. Verse 27 gathers the people’s acts into a collective diagnosis; verse 25 shows the land bearing and answering that condition.
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