What Does Leviticus 26:22 Mean in the King James?
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.
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’s terror unfolds as a chain: what is sent into the people’s midst bereaves families, destroys provision, thins the community, and empties its roads.
THE MEANING
The speaker says, “I will send wild beasts among you,” and the damage spreads through every layer of communal life: children are taken, herds destroyed, people diminished, and highways emptied. The terror reaches from bereavement and lost provision to a landscape with no ordinary passage.
THE ROOT
וְשָׁלַחְתִּי
veshalachti
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send, dispatch, or send forth; by extension, to release or let go.
The verse uses שָׁלַח (shalach, send or release): danger is actively sent forth into the community. The same root appears in שָׁלִיחַ (shaliach, messenger) and שִׁלֹחַ (Shiloach, sent waters), showing that what is sent can carry very different outcomes.
ALSO GROWS
shaliach: Messenger, envoy; one who is sent.
שָׁלִיחַ
A messenger carries what is sent into another person’s midst, just as the wild beasts are sent among the people here.
Shiloach: Sent waters; the name of a water channel.
שִׁלֹחַ
The same root names waters associated with restored sight, showing that the root describes sending forth while the object sent shapes its effect.
וְשִׁכְּלָה
veshikkĕlah
GROWS FROM
שכל
To bereave; to deprive someone of children or offspring.
“rob you of your children” in this verse is veshikkĕlah. The verb translated “rob” carries the specific force of bereavement: being left without one’s children. It places the loss of kinship at the start of a widening sequence that reaches herds, people, and roads.
ALSO GROWS
shakhul: Bereaved; deprived of children.
שָׁכוּל
This form names the condition the verse’s verb brings upon families.
meshakkel: Bereaving; causing the loss of offspring.
מְשַׁכֵּל
This form makes explicit the force carried by the wild beasts in the verse.
וְנָשַׁמּוּ
venashammu
GROWS FROM
שמם
To become desolate, laid waste, or appalling.
“desolate” in this verse is venashammu. The verse closes with a form of שְׁמָמָה (shemamah, desolation), making the empty highways part of the devastation itself. The loss reaches the shared routes by which people move through communal life.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation; a wasted or deserted place.
שְׁמָמָה
The noun gives the condition into which the highways fall.
shomem: Desolate; laid waste.
שׁוֹמֵם
This form describes the emptied state of the routes at the verse’s close.
THE PATTERN
When predatory force enters a people’s midst, its damage spreads from family and livelihood to the shared routes of communal life.
In the days of Shamgar the son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the highways were unoccupied, and the travellers walked through byways.If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts: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
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.“Let my people go” uses שָׁלַח (shalach, send or release), the same root as “send” in this verse. In Exodus the command releases people from bondage; here the speaker sends wild beasts among them. The shared root makes the outcome turn on what is sent forth.
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