What Does Leviticus 25:35 Mean in the King James?
And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee.
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 verse presents support as strengthening someone so they can keep living beside you.
THE MEANING
The verse places another person’s faltering need beside you and support within reach, so they can live with you. That shared life includes both kin and the stranger or sojourner; unfamiliarity does not place someone beyond its circle.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this dissolves is that a person’s poverty makes their survival solely their own concern, or that only kin belong within the circle of help.
THE ROOT
וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ
veheḥĕzaqtā
GROWS FROM
חזק
To be strong, make strong, or take hold.
“relieve” in this verse is veheḥĕzaqtā. The verb carries the sense of making someone strong or holding them up. The support named here answers a faltering hand with strength, keeping the person included in life beside you.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāzaq: Be strong; grow firm.
חָזַק
The root’s sense of firmness shows the strength that support supplies when someone is failing.
ḥizzēq: Strengthen; make firm.
חִזֵּק
This branch makes the action clear: support helps restore another person’s strength.
heḥĕzîq: Hold fast; take hold; sustain.
הֶחֱזִיק
The verse’s verb belongs to this family of holding and sustaining someone who might otherwise slip away.
וָחַי
vāḥay
GROWS FROM
חיה
To live, be alive, or cause to live.
The stated end is that the person live with you. The root connects being alive with the act of keeping someone alive, binding practical support to shared life.
ALSO GROWS
ḥay: Alive; living.
חַי
This names the living person whose place beside you the verse protects.
ḥayyim: Life; living.
חַיִּים
The verse’s purpose is life in company, not a distant or abstract benefit.
heḥĕyāh: Make alive; keep alive.
הֶחֱיָה
This causative form links sustaining another person with the same root as living.
THE PATTERN
When someone’s life is endangered by lack or weakness, scripture pictures care as practical support that keeps them within shared life.
But thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth.Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?THE THREAD
Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.“Strengthen” in Isaiah comes from the same Hebrew root, חזק (ḥ-z-q), as “relieve” in Leviticus. Leviticus describes a hand that is failing; Isaiah names strengthening weak hands as the response.
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