What Does Leviticus 18:28 Mean in the King James?
That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you.
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 passive ground beneath you: when you defile it, it becomes an active force that can cast you out.
THE MEANING
This verse presents the land as bound up with the way you live: defilement reaches beyond you, and the ground itself answers. Its image is physical and unsettling, the land vomits out those it can no longer bear.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The ground is merely a passive container, untouched by what people do upon it.
THE ROOT
קָאָה
qāʾāh
GROWS FROM
קיא
q-y-ʾ
To vomit or disgorge.
“spued out” in this verse is qāʾāh. The Hebrew verb gives the land a body’s action: it does not simply become a setting for consequences but expels what defiles it. The same root describes vomiting elsewhere, making the verse’s image blunt and embodied.
ALSO GROWS
tāqîʾ: It will vomit out.
תָּקִיא
Leviticus 20:22 repeats the land’s expulsion with this same root, showing the image is structural, not incidental.
yəqiʾennû: He will vomit it out.
יְקִאֶנּוּ
Job 20:15 uses the same root for riches expelled from the body, echoing the verse’s image of rejection from within.
בְּטַמַּאֲכֶם
bĕṭamməʾăkem
GROWS FROM
טמא
ṭ-m-ʾ
To be unclean or to make something unclean.
“defile” in this verse is bĕṭamməʾăkem. The verse names defilement as something done to the land, not only a private condition. The ground’s response is tied directly to what is done to it.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmēʾ: Unclean.
טָמֵא
The root can describe a state of uncleanness, while this verse shows that state affecting the land itself.
ṭumʾāh: Uncleanness or defilement.
טֻמְאָה
This noun makes the same root’s condition explicit: what is done can leave a place marked by defilement.
THE PATTERN
The land and creation are portrayed as participants that bear the effects of human defilement and answer it.
Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out.The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.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 joins the same two movements: the land is defiled, and it vomits out its inhabitants. It makes explicit that the land is an active participant in the chain described in verse 28.
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