What Does Leviticus 26:24 Mean?
And I also will walk against you, and will strike you seven times for your shortcomings.
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
Then will I also walk contrary unto you, and will punish you yet seven times for your sins.THE KEY
The repeated “I also” makes the turn explicit: sustained opposition is answered with opposition, then intensified sevenfold.
THE MEANING
When you persist in walking against God, God meets that path with opposition and strikes you seven times for your missing. The repeated sevenfold measure presents an intensified consequence, and the word rendered “sins” carries the sense of missing or erring.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that persistent resistance can remain consequence-free is overturned here: the verse presents it as drawing an answering, intensified response.
THE ROOT
קֶרִי
qeri
GROWS FROM
ק-ר-ה
q-r-h
meet, encounter, happen
“contrary” in this verse is qeri. Here קֶרִי (qeri, opposition or hostility) appears in a phrase meaning to walk in opposition; its proposed link to קָרָה (qarah, meet or happen) is debated. If that root echo is heard, the threat is more than distance: the walk itself becomes a hostile encounter.
ALSO GROWS
qarah: meet, encounter, happen
קָרָה
This possible root link gives the opposition the force of an encounter rather than a distant condition.
miqreh: event, occurrence, chance
מִקְרֶה
This related word shows the root’s range around what meets or happens, though the derivation of qeri in this phrase remains uncertain.
וְהָלַכְתִּי
wehalakhti
GROWS FROM
ה-ל-ך
h-l-k
walk, go
The verse describes opposition as a walk: a course of movement, not a detached feeling. The same root can name bodily walking and a way of conduct, so the conflict takes shape as two paths that cannot move together.
ALSO GROWS
holekh: one who walks or goes
הוֹלֵךְ
This participle keeps the root concrete: the verse’s opposition is expressed as movement.
halakhah: way of conduct; a ruling or law
הֲלָכָה
This later Hebrew word extends the walk into a way of living, echoing how the verse frames a persistent course.
חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם
chatto’teikhem
GROWS FROM
ח-ט-א
ḥ-ṭ-ʾ
miss, err
“shortcomings” in this verse is chatto’teikhem. The word translated “sins” carries the root sense of missing or erring, giving the verse a concrete image of a way gone off course. Its consequence is tied to that miss rather than to an abstract label.
ALSO GROWS
chata: miss, err, sin
חָטָא
This verb names the act behind the plural “sins” in the verse.
chatta’t: sin; also a purification offering
חַטָּאת
This related noun shows the root’s range from the act of missing to the offering associated with it.
THE PATTERN
A course a person persists in returns through consequences that answer its direction.
With the clean one you show yourself clean; and with the crooked you twist yourself.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.Therefore they eat from the fruit of their way, and they are filled with their own counsel.THE THREAD
Do two walk together, unless they have met?Both verses use ה-ל-ך (h-l-k, walk or go): Leviticus describes God walking in opposition, while Amos asks what agreement allows two to share a walk. Amos makes the friction here audible as a clash of paths, not a vague distance.
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