What Does Psalm 105:35 Mean?
And ate all the green growth in their land, and devoured the fruit of their soil.
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 did eat up all the herbs in their land, and devoured the fruit of their ground.THE KEY
What English styles as “eat up” and then “devoured” is the same Hebrew verb repeated: one unbroken consumption of the growth and its fruit.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to a moment when provision is consumed all the way through: the growth is gone, and so is the ground’s fruit. Hebrew repeats the same verb for both, tracing the loss from what grows to what it yields.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that visible abundance guarantees protected provision: both the growth and its fruit can be consumed.
THE ROOT
וַיֹּאכַל
wayyōʾkhal and it
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
Eat, consume.
“eat up / devoured” in this verse is wayyōʾkhal and it. The same form, וַיֹּאכַל (wayyōʾkhal, and it ate), appears twice in the Hebrew. The English changes its wording, while Hebrew holds both the vegetation and the fruit inside one repeated act of eating.
ALSO GROWS
maʾakhal: Food; something to eat.
מַאֲכָל
This noun from the same root makes the passage’s reversal plain: what the land produces as food becomes what is consumed.
ʾokhel: Food or nourishment.
אֹכֶל
The same root names both the act of eating and what is eaten, joining the taking to the loss of provision.
אַדְמָתָם
ʾadmatam their ground
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
A consonantal family associated with redness and reddish earth.
The ground word shares its consonants with אָדָם (ʾadam, human/Adam), the ground-being, and אָדֹם (ʾadom, red). The fruit is lost from the same ground-word family that names the human, linking the consumed soil with the source from which humanity is named.
ALSO GROWS
ʾadam: Human; Adam, the ground-being.
אָדָם
Its name is linked to אֲדָמָה (ʾadamah, ground/soil), connecting the human to the fruit-bearing ground in this verse.
ʾadom: Red; ruddy.
אָדֹם
It preserves the family’s color association with reddish earth beneath the word for ground.
THE PATTERN
Provision can be consumed at every layer, from what grows to what the ground yields and what is sown.
And there shall rise after them seven years of hunger, and all the fullness shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt, and the hunger shall consume the land.What the shearer has left, the locust has eaten; and what the locust has left, the lapper has eaten; and what the lapper has left, the gnawer has eaten.And as he sowed, some seeds fell beside the road, and the winged ones came and devoured them up.THE THREAD
And there shall rise after them seven years of hunger, and all the fullness shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt, and the hunger shall consume the land.In Genesis, famine “consumes” the land with the same root אכל (ʾ-k-l, eat/consume) repeated here. English shifts among “eat up,” “devoured,” and “consume,” while the Hebrew carries one image: provision itself being eaten away.
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