What Does Leviticus 26:31 Mean in the King James?
And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
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
A place set apart for the sacred can still be emptied.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks judgment without a soft edge: cities become waste, sanctuaries desolate, and the scent of offerings goes unreceived. Sacred designation and beautiful ritual do not protect a people from this devastation or guarantee acceptance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sacred places or offerings guarantee an unbroken welcome.
THE ROOT
וַהֲשִׁמּוֹתִי
wa-hashimoti
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
sh-m-m
To become desolate or be appalled; in this verb form, to make desolate.
The root behind “desolation” can also describe being appalled. Ruin and the shock of witnessing it belong to the same Hebrew word-family.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun shares the root that gives the verse its action of making the sanctuaries desolate.
shamem: To be desolate or appalled.
שָׁמֵם
This form shows how the root can name both the ruined state and the stunned response to it.
מִקְדְּשֵׁיכֶם
miqdĕshêkhem
GROWS FROM
ק־ד־שׁ
q-d-sh
To set apart; miqdash means a set-apart place or sanctuary.
“sanctuaries” in this verse is miqdĕshêkhem. “Sanctuary” carries the root of being set apart. The verse places that sacred designation beside desolation: being set apart does not keep a place inhabited or intact.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart.
קָדוֹשׁ
The same root describes what marks the sanctuary as sacred.
qodesh: Set-apartness; a sacred thing or place.
קֹדֶשׁ
This branch makes the sanctuary’s nature explicit: it is a place designated as set apart.
THE PATTERN
A sacred designation cannot keep a place from becoming empty.
They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.THE THREAD
And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.The word translated “desolation” for the sanctuaries in verse 31 comes from שׁמם (sh-m-m), the same root behind “astonished” here. English makes ruin and astonishment sound unrelated; Hebrew lets desolation itself carry the shock of seeing it.
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