What Does Leviticus 26:26 Mean?
And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall turn your bread back to you by weight. You shall eat, and not be filled.
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 when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.THE KEY
The verse describes more than hunger: the very support of nourishment is broken, so eating continues without reaching fullness.
THE MEANING
God says the support of bread is broken, and the bread that remains is rationed by weight. The people eat, yet their need stays unmet: the meal never reaches satisfaction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that having food means having enough: people can eat and still lack the nourishment that sustains them.
THE ROOT
וְשָׁבַרְתִּי
ve-shavarti
GROWS FROM
שבר
to break, shatter
The verse says the staff of bread is broken, making deprivation a collapse of support, not merely an empty plate. The same root names the breaking itself and its result: what once upheld nourishment is fractured.
ALSO GROWS
shever: breakage, ruin
שֶׁבֶר
The broken staff leaves the food supply itself in a state of ruin.
shibber: to break or shatter
שִׁבֵּר
This active form echoes the force of the verse: the support is deliberately broken.
תִּשְׂבָּעוּ
tisbe'u
GROWS FROM
שבע
to be sated, full, or to have enough
“filled” in this verse is tisbe'u. The verse uses the root of fullness and enoughness, then denies that endpoint after eating. The lack is not only an empty plate; the body never arrives at sufficiency.
ALSO GROWS
saveaʿ: sated, full
שָׂבֵעַ
It names the state the people eat without reaching.
sovaʿ: satiety, fullness
שֹׂבַע
It makes clear that the verse withholds the fullness that eating ordinarily promises.
בַּמִּשְׁקָל
ba-mishqal
GROWS FROM
שקל
to weigh, measure by weight
“by weight” in this verse is ba-mishqal. Bread is returned according to a scale, so scarcity becomes a measured allotment. The people still eat, but each portion is limited before it reaches them.
ALSO GROWS
sheqel: a unit of weight
שֶׁקֶל
The familiar weight unit shows how the root turns bread into a counted portion.
shaqal: to weigh
שָׁקַל
The verb names the act that limits how much bread each person receives.
THE PATTERN
Bread sustains the body as a support, so scarcity turns eating from nourishment into measured survival.
And wine that gladdens the heart of a frail one, and oil to make his face shine, and bread that holds up the heart of a frail one.Give us today our bread for the coming day.And he said to me, Son of man, look, I am breaking the staff of bread in Jerusalem. They shall eat bread by weight and with anxiety, and drink water by measure, stunned.THE THREAD
And he called for a famine upon the land, and broke every staff of bread.Psalm 105 uses the same root, שבר (shavar, to break), and the same image of bread as a staff. It makes explicit that famine breaks bread’s sustaining support, the same fracture that leads here to weighed portions and eating without fullness.
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