What Does Leviticus 26:31 Mean?
And I will make your cities a dry waste, and I will empty your set-apart places, and I will not smell the restful fragrance of your sweetness.
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 make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.THE KEY
A place set apart for the sacred can still be emptied.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks judgment without a soft edge: cities become waste, sanctuaries desolate, and the scent of offerings goes unreceived. Sacred designation and beautiful ritual do not protect a people from this devastation or guarantee acceptance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that sacred places or offerings guarantee an unbroken welcome.
THE ROOT
וַהֲשִׁמּוֹתִי
wa-hashimoti
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
sh-m-m
To become desolate or be appalled; in this verb form, to make desolate.
“empty” in this verse is wa-hashimoti. The root behind “desolation” can also describe being appalled. Ruin and the shock of witnessing it belong to the same Hebrew word-family.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun shares the root that gives the verse its action of making the sanctuaries desolate.
shamem: To be desolate or appalled.
שָׁמֵם
This form shows how the root can name both the ruined state and the stunned response to it.
מִקְדְּשֵׁיכֶם
miqdĕshêkhem
GROWS FROM
ק־ד־שׁ
q-d-sh
To set apart; miqdash means a set-apart place or sanctuary.
“set-apart places” in this verse is miqdĕshêkhem. “Sanctuary” carries the root of being set apart. The verse places that sacred designation beside desolation: being set apart does not keep a place inhabited or intact.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: Set apart.
קָדוֹשׁ
The same root describes what marks the sanctuary as sacred.
qodesh: Set-apartness; a sacred thing or place.
קֹדֶשׁ
This branch makes the sanctuary’s nature explicit: it is a place designated as set apart.
THE PATTERN
A sacred designation cannot keep a place from becoming empty.
They send fire into your set-apart place; they defile the dwelling place of your name down to the ground.Because of you, Zion shall be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the heights of the forest.Look, your house is left to you, empty.THE THREAD
And I will empty the land, and your enemies who settle in it shall be stunned by it.The word translated “desolation” for the sanctuaries in verse 31 comes from שׁמם (sh-m-m), the same root behind “astonished” here. English makes ruin and astonishment sound unrelated; Hebrew lets desolation itself carry the shock of seeing it.
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