What Does Leviticus 26:32 Mean?
And I will empty the land, and your enemies who settle in it shall be stunned by it.
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 the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.THE KEY
In Hebrew, the land’s desolation and its enemies’ astonishment share one root: the waste itself enters the witness.
THE MEANING
God brings the land into desolation, and even the enemies dwelling there are appalled by what they inhabit. The damage reaches the ground itself and registers in those who remain inside it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being an enemy of the people in a place means I can remain untouched by what happens to that land.
THE ROOT
הֲשִׁמֹּתִי
hashimmoti
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
Be desolate; be appalled or stunned.
“empty the land” in this verse is hashimmoti. The Hiphil form הֲשִׁמֹּתִי (hashimmoti, “I make desolate”) and וְשָׁמְמוּ (veshomemu, “they are appalled or desolate”) share the root שׁמם (shamem). The Hebrew joins the land’s ruin to the witnesses’ shock, while English separates them into desolation and astonishment.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation, waste.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun makes the land’s condition a branch of the same root that names the enemies’ response.
shamem: To be desolate or appalled.
שָׁמֵם
This verbal form holds physical ruin and stunned response within the same word-family.
THE PATTERN
When a place is laid waste, its ruin reaches those who inhabit or witness it, leaving them stunned or grieving.
And I will make this city a waste, and a hissing. Everyone who passes by there will be stunned and hiss because of all its blows.Then all the princes of the sea will come down from their thrones. They will take off their robes and strip their embroidered garments. They will clothe themselves with trembling. They will sit upon the ground, and they will tremble every moment, and they will be stunned over you.And they throw dust on their heads, and cry out, weeping and mourning, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had ships on the sea grew rich by her costliness! For in one hour she has been emptied.THE THREAD
They have made it desolate, and being desolate it mourns to me. The whole land is made desolate, because no one sets it upon the heart.Jeremiah repeats שׁמם (shamem, “be desolate”) for the land’s ruin, the same root that joins Leviticus’s desolated land to its enemies’ astonishment. The repetition lets the desolation spread through the sentence, from the land itself to the mourning that surrounds it.
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