Leviticus 26:38

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will eat you up.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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וַאֲבַדְתֶּ֖ם

ʼâbad

“and · to perish”

Conjunction + Verb, Qal, Sequential Perfect, 2nd Person, Masculine, Plural

Appears 185× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Exodus 10:7

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root

TWOT: 2

perish, vanish, go astray, be destroyed - (Qal) - perish, die, be exterminated - perish, vanish (figuratively) - be lost, strayed - (Piel) - to destroy, kill, cause to perish, to give up - to blot out, do away with, cause to vanish, (figuratively) - cause to stray, lose - (Hiphil) - to destroy, put to death - of divine judgment - object name of kings (figuratively)

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

6: words
6: distinct lemmas
Pentateuch: section

Grammatical profile

3 verbs
2 nouns
1 particle

Verb forms

וַאֲבַדְתֶּ֖ם Qal · Sequential Perfect
וְאָכְלָ֣ה Qal · Sequential Perfect
אֹיְבֵיכֶֽם Qal · Participle Active

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 16 words from the Hebrew and 16 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — the same length.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Leviticus 26:38 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Deuteronomy 4:26–27 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that you shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto you go over the Jordan to possess it; you shall not prolong your days on it, but shall utterly be destroyed.
Deuteronomy 28:48 therefore shall you serve your enemies whom Yahweh shall send against you, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron on your neck, until he have destroyed you.
Deuteronomy 28:68 Yahweh will bring you into Egypt again with ships, by the way of which I said to you, You shall see it no more again: and there you shall sell yourselves to your enemies for bondservants and for bondmaids, and no man shall buy you.
Isaiah 27:13 It shall happen in that day, that a great trumpet shall be blown; and they shall come who were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and those who were outcasts in the land of Egypt; and they shall worship Yahweh in the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
Jeremiah 42:17–18 So shall it be with all the men who set their faces to go into Egypt to sojourn there: they shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence; and none of them shall remain or escape from the evil that I will bring on them.
Jeremiah 42:22 Now therefore know certainly that you shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence, in the place where you desire to go to sojourn there.
Jeremiah 44:12–14 I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to sojourn there, and they shall all be consumed; in the land of Egypt shall they fall; they shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine; they shall die, from the least even to the greatest, by the sword and by the famine; and they shall be an object of horror, [and] an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach.
Jeremiah 44:27–28 Behold, I watch over them for evil, and not for good; and all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by the famine, until there be an end of them.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Leviticus 26:38 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וַאֲבַדְתֶּ֖ם בַּגּוֹיִ֑ם וְאָכְלָ֣ה אֶתְכֶ֔ם אֶ֖רֶץ אֹיְבֵיכֶֽם

You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will eat you up.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Leviticus 26:38 Septuagint · lemma form

καί ἀποὀλλύω ἐν ὁ ἔθνος καί καταἐσθίω σύ ὁ γῆ ὁ ἐχθρός σύ

And you⌃ shall perish among the Gentiles, and the land of your enemies shall devour you.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Onkelos Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וְתֵבְדוּן בֵּינֵי עַמְמַיָא וּתְגַמַר יָתְכוֹן אֲרַע בַּעֲלֵי דְבָבֵיכוֹן

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Onkelos — Aramaic: “Onkelos Genesis” (public domain); “Onkelos Exodus” (public domain); “Onkelos Leviticus” (public domain); “Onkelos Numbers” (public domain); “Onkelos Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “J.W. Etheridge. The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan Ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch. London: Longmans, Green, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.
Targum Pseudo-Jonathan Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

וְתֵיבְדוּן בֵּין עַמְמַיָא וּתְגַמַר יַתְכוֹן בְּמוֹתָנָא אֲרַע בַּעֲלֵי דְבָבֵיכוֹן

And you shall perish among the nations, and be consumed with pestilence in the land of your enemies,

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan — Aramaic: “Targum Jonathan on Genesis” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Exodus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Leviticus” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Numbers” (public domain); “Targum Jonathan on Deuteronomy” (public domain). English: “The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Leviticus 26:38 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

the land of your enemies shall eat you up, &c.--On the removal of the ten tribes into captivity, they never returned, and all traces of them were lost.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Adam Clarke's Commentary

Verse 38. The land of your enemies shall eat you up.] Does this refer to the total loss of the ten tribes? These are so completely swallowed up in some enemies' land, that nothing concerning their existence or place of residence remains but mere conjecture.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(38) And ye shall perish among the heathen.—Better, And ye shall be lost among the heathen, as the word here rendered “perish” is often translated. (See Deu_22:3; 1Sa_9:3; 1Sa_9:20; Jer_1:6; Eze_34:4; Eze_34:16; Psa_119:176, &c.) The context plainly shows that utter destruction is not meant here. The very next verse speaks of a remnant who are to pine away, whilst Lev_26:40 speaks of their confessing their guilt.

The land of your enemies shall eat you up.—That is, they shall be so completely mixed up with the heathen nations amongst whom they are to be dispersed, and so utterly incorporated amongst them, that they will disappear, and have no separate existence. This is the sense of this peculiar phrase in Num_13:32; Eze_36:13.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands,.... Such as were not taken off by any public calamity, as the sword or pestilence should gradually diminish and melt away like wax before the fire, and die in and for their iniquities in an enemy's country, see Eze 24:23,

and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them; or for the iniquities of their evil fathers, as the Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan; they treading in their steps, and doing the same evil deeds, whereby they filled up the measure of their fathers' sins, and brought upon them deserved punishment. Mat 23:32.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary

Consume you. The Hebrew spies said that the land of Chanaan devoured its inhabitants. Such shall be in reality the enemies’ country in your regard. You shall not be able to establish yourselves or be happy there.

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

38. Ye shall perish among the heathen — Says Josephus, in Wars of the Jews: “The number of those that were carried captive during this whole war was ninety-seven thousand, and the number that perished during the whole siege one million one hundred thousand, the greater part of whom were, indeed, of the same nation with the citizens of Jerusalem, but not belonging to the city itself; for they were come up from all the country to the feast of unleavened bread and were on a sudden shut up by an army.” So many were led away into captivity that the slave markets of the world were glutted, and, in exact accordance with prophecy, there was no man to buy them. Deu_28:68.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Rashi

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki (Rashi)

ואבדתם בגוים AND YE SHALL BE LOST AMONG THE NATIONS — when you are scattered about among the nations you will lose sight of each other (lit., “you will be lost from one another”) (cf. Rashi on v. 33; see also Sifra, Bechukotai, Chapter 8 1).

ואכלה אתכם [AND THE LAND OF YOUR ENEMIES] SHALL EAT YOU UP — This refers to those who will die in exile (cf. Targum Jonathan on).

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Leviticus, in the Pentateuch, opens this verse with 6 words (6 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is ʼâbad (“to perish”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word ʼâbad carries the sense “to perish.” How does it shape the verse?
How does Deuteronomy 4:26–27, which shares this passage’s theme, read alongside this verse?
These translations render this verse differently. What is at stake in choosing one wording over another?
«וַאֲבַדְתֶּ֖ם» is a Qal Sequential Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Jamieson, Fausset & Brown and Adam Clarke's Commentary read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

These translations choose different wording for 8 words in this verse.
6 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 6 words in this verse.