Instead, you will perish among the nations, and your enemies’ land will consume you.
Parallel translations
- WEB You will perish among the nations. The land of your enemies will eat you up.
- KJV And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
- BSB You will perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies will consume you.
- NKJV You shall perish among the nations, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
- NLT You will die among the foreign nations and be devoured in the land of your enemies.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
Israel will perish among the nations, swallowed up in enemy lands. Exile threatens the very survival of the people.
Overview
To 'perish among the nations' and be 'eaten up' by enemy lands describes the wasting away of the exiled people far from home. This is the grim low point of the curses. Yet the survival of a remnant, promised in the verses that follow, testifies to God's covenant mercy that judgment never fully extinguishes.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 8
- Jer 42:17–18So shall it be with all the men who set their faces to go into Egypt to live 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.’
- Jer 42:22Now 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 live there.”
- Deut 28:68Yahweh will bring you into Egypt again with ships, by the way of which I told to you that you would never see it again. There you will sell yourselves to your enemies for male and female slaves, and nobody will buy you.
- Isa 27:13It will happen in that day that a great trumpet will be blown; and those who were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and those who were outcasts in the land of Egypt, shall come; and they will worship Yahweh in the holy mountain at Jerusalem.
- Jer 44:12–14I will take the remnant of Judah, that have set their faces to go into the land of Egypt to live there, and they will all be consumed. They will fall in the land of Egypt. They will be consumed by the sword and by the famine. They will die, from the least even to the greatest, by the sword and by the famine. They will be an object of horror, an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach.
- Deut 4:26–27I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from off the land which you go over the Jordan to possess it. You will not prolong your days on it, but will utterly be destroyed.
- Deut 28:48therefore you will serve your enemies whom Yahweh sends against you, in hunger, in thirst, in nakedness, and in lack of all things. He will put an iron yoke on your neck, until he has destroyed you.
- Jer 44:27–28Behold, 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 they are all gone.
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Christ at the center
Every sacrifice, every priest, and every day of atonement points beyond itself to the one perfect offering and the great High Priest who, by his own blood, makes the unclean holy once for all.
How Leviticus 26:38 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.