What Does Leviticus 26:38 Mean in the King James?
And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
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 that should hold life becomes, in the verse’s image, the mouth that consumes it.
THE MEANING
The verse confronts you with loss beyond survival: you perish among other peoples, and enemy ground is pictured as consuming you. The image makes displacement total, because even the land beneath your enemies’ rule offers no shelter.
THE ROOT
וְאָכְלָה
ve’akhla
GROWS FROM
אכל
’akhal
eat, consume
“eat you up” in this verse is ve’akhla. The land is cast as an eater, not a shelter. The same root אָכַל (’akhal, eat or consume) also forms words for food, so the image collapses the boundary between what sustains and what devours.
ALSO GROWS
’okhel: food, nourishment
אֹכֶל
The root can name what is eaten as well as the act of eating, sharpening the verse’s reversal of the land’s sustaining role.
ma’akhal: food, that which is eaten
מַאֲכָל
This branch makes the land’s people into what is consumed, completing the verse’s image of ground turned against its inhabitants.
וַאֲבַדְתֶּם
va’avadtem
GROWS FROM
אבד
’avad
be lost, perish
“perish” in this verse is va’avadtem. The root holds together perishing and being lost. Here the people are lost among other nations, and the next image makes that loss feel complete: the hostile land consumes them.
ALSO GROWS
’oved: one who is lost or perishing
אֹבֵד
This branch carries the sense of losing one’s place, not only ceasing to live.
’avaddon: destruction, ruin
אֲבַדּוֹן
This branch shows how the root extends from being lost to the ruin that follows.
THE PATTERN
When people are uprooted, the nations and ground around them can become agents of their undoing.
And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.And the LORD shall scatter you among the nations, and ye shall be left few in number among the heathen, whither the LORD shall lead you.And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.THE THREAD
And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature.The Hebrew root אכל (’akhal, eat or consume) appears in both verses: the land is described as eating its inhabitants. The shared verb makes the land’s usual role as a place of sustenance turn into the image of a consuming force.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us