What Does Leviticus 26:39 Mean?
And those of you who are left shall rot away in their crookedness in your enemies' lands; and also in the crookednesses of their fathers shall they rot away with them.
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 they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies’ lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.THE KEY
Being left does not mean being restored: those who remain can still pine away.
THE MEANING
You may remain in the lands of enemies and still pine away; the verse holds survival and deterioration together. It names your own crookedness and the crookedness of your fathers as burdens that remain present with you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that surviving means you are whole or unharmed; being among those left does not stop the wasting.
THE ROOT
הַנִּשְׁאָרִים
han-nišʾārîm
GROWS FROM
שאר
remain, be left over
“they that are left” in this verse is han-nišʾārîm. Those left are named by שאר (shaʾar), “remain, be left over”; the word keeps survival in view even as the verse says they pine away. Its branches name a remainder or remnant, revealing that what remains can still carry the condition it has survived.
ALSO GROWS
sheʾerît: remnant; what remains
שְׁאֵרִית
This branch shares the root שאר and makes clear that a remnant is a remainder, not necessarily a restored whole.
sheʾār: remainder; rest
שְׁאָר
This branch shares the same root consonants and echoes the verse’s focus on those left over, whose remaining does not protect them from wasting away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures devastation as a wasting away that can consume bodies and what people possess.
And your headdresses shall be upon your heads, and your sandals upon your feet. You shall not wail nor weep; but you shall waste away in your crookednesses, and groan to one another.This is the striking with which the LORD strikes all the nations that fought against Jerusalem; their flesh dissolves while they stand upon their feet, their eyes melt in their sockets, and their tongue dissolves in their mouth.Your gold and your silver have rusted, and their rust will be a witness against you, and will devour your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days.THE THREAD
This is the striking with which the LORD strikes all the nations that fought against Jerusalem; their flesh dissolves while they stand upon their feet, their eyes melt in their sockets, and their tongue dissolves in their mouth.Leviticus and Zechariah use forms of the Hebrew root מקק (māqaq), “melt away, waste away.” Zechariah makes the image brutally physical, flesh, eyes, and tongue consuming while the body still stands, so “pine away” carries the force of decay within survival.
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