What Does Leviticus 26:22 Mean?
I will also send the wild beasts among you, which shall strip you of your children, and cut off your cattle, and make you few in number; and your paths shall be emptied.
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
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 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.
“strip 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.
“emptied” 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 son of Anath, in the days of Jael, the paths stop, and the walkers of the roads walk crooked paths.If I cause beasts of harm to pass through the land, and they make it childless, so that it becomes a wasteland, and none cross through from the face of the beasts.And I see, and look, a grass-green horse, and the name of the one seated upon it is Death, and Hades follows with him. And power is given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, with hunger, with death, and by the wild beasts of the earth.THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to 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.
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