What Does Leviticus 25:35 Mean?
And if your brother totters, and his hand slips beside you, then you shall take hold of him, though he be a sojourner or one who settles beside you, that he may live with you.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
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 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.
“take hold of” 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 you shall open your hand wide to him, and you shall surely lend him enough for what he lacks.Strengthen the hands that have let go, and steady the knees that buckle.Whoever has the world's means of living, and gazes upon his brother in need, and shuts his inner parts away from him, how does the love of God remain in him?THE THREAD
Strengthen the hands that have let go, and steady the knees that buckle.“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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