What Does Leviticus 26:25 Mean?
And I will bring a sword upon you that shall avenge my covenant. When you are gathered together within your cities, I will send the plague among you, and you shall be given into the hand of the enemy.
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 I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.THE KEY
The verse’s two verbs make judgment a sequence of transfers: pestilence is sent into the cities, then the people themselves are given into the enemy’s hand.
THE MEANING
The verse names covenant judgment in concrete stages: violence comes against the people, pestilence enters their gathered cities, and the people are placed in an enemy’s power. The final handoff reaches beyond physical harm to their collective security.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that covenant belonging makes a people immune from judgment: here the covenant’s consequences include violence, pestilence, and enemy control.
THE ROOT
וְנִתַּתֶּם
wə-nittatem
GROWS FROM
נתן
Give, set, place.
“given into the hand” in this verse is wə-nittatem. The Hebrew verb means that the people are given or placed into the enemy’s hand. The final movement is a transfer of control, not a rescue.
ALSO GROWS
natan: Give, set, place.
נָתַן
This verb names the handoff directly: the people are placed into the enemy’s power.
mattanah: Gift, something given.
מַתָּנָה
The related noun keeps the root’s basic sense of giving visible, while the verse makes clear that this particular giving over is hostile.
וְשִׁלַּחְתִּי
wə-shillachti
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send forth, release.
“send” in this verse is wə-shillachti. The pestilence is deliberately sent into the people’s midst. The root can describe sending or release, but here its object is disease, and the violence of that act remains plain.
ALSO GROWS
shilluaḥ: Sending away, dismissal.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch shows the root’s reach from sending forth to releasing or sending away.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of the waters of Shiloah.
שִׁלֹחַ
The same sending-root appears in the name of the waters associated with restored sight; here the thing sent is pestilence.
נֹקֶמֶת
noqemet
GROWS FROM
נקם
Avenge, exact vengeance.
“avenge my covenant” in this verse is noqemet. The verse repeats נקם across the verb and noun: the sword is described as avenging the covenant’s vengeance. That echo ties the weapon directly to the covenant’s reckoning.
ALSO GROWS
naqam: Avenge, take vengeance.
נָקַם
This verbal form shares the action named by the sword’s description.
neqamah: Vengeance.
נְקָמָה
This noun makes the root echo in the phrase explicit: the sword avenges the covenant’s vengeance.
THE PATTERN
Judgment is pictured as a cascade of exposure in which disease and violence enter while a community loses control of its security.
The LORD shall make the pestilence cling to you, until he has run you out from off the ground, where you come to possess it.And afterward, says the LORD, I will give Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and those left behind in this city from the plague, from the sword, and from the hunger, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, into their enemies' hand, and into the hand of those who seek their living soul. He shall strike them with the mouth of the sword. He shall not spare them, nor pity them, nor have compassion.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 the nations shall know that the house of Israel was uncovered for their crookedness. Because they broke trust with me, I hid my face from them and gave them into the hand of their enemies, and they all fell by the sword.Ezekiel uses the same root נתן (natan, give or place) for giving a people into their enemies’ hand. The shared verb makes the handoff concrete, and the next phrase keeps its consequence in view: they fall by the sword.
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