Leviticus 26:22

Summary

The verse describes a divine action consisting of sending wild animals against the people, which will cause bereavement, destroy livestock, reduce the population, and leave the roads desolate. The sentence is built as a chain of five consecutive verbs, each continuing the consequence of the previous one.

Key words

• hishlachTi ("I will send", H7971G) — hiphil (causative) sequential perfect, first person: the subject explicitly sends the animals, initiating the chain.
• chaiYat ("[the] animal[s] of", H2416C) — feminine singular construct, linked to ha-sadeh ("the field", H7704I) to form "animal of the field," i.e., wild/untamed animal.
• shikkeLah ("it will make childless", H7921A) — piel (intensive) sequential perfect, third feminine singular; the subject is "the animal of the field," acting to strip of children.
• hikhRitah ("it will cut off", H3772I) — hiphil sequential perfect, third feminine singular, continuing the same subject's action upon behemtechem ("your livestock", H0929).
• nashaMmu ("they will be desolate", H8074G) — niphal (passive/reflexive) sequential perfect, third plural; here the grammatical subject shifts to darkeichem ("your roads", H1870K), which become desolate as the final result.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is structured as a sequence of five verbs, each marked with the sequential perfect (vav-consecutive pattern), which in narrative or predictive discourse indicates that each action follows logically and temporally from the one before. The first verb, hishlachTi ("I will send", H7971G), is in the first person and establishes the acting subject as sending chaiYat ha-sadeh ("[the] animal[s] of the field", H2416C + H7704I) — a construct phrase meaning a wild or untamed creature — against the addressees, marked by bachem ("among you").

After this initial action, the grammatical subject shifts to the animal itself (third feminine singular), which performs three further verbs in sequence: shikkeLah ("it will make childless", H7921A) in piel, an intensive stem often associated with violent or thorough action; hikhRitah ("it will cut off", H3772I) in hiphil, targeting behemtechem ("your livestock", H0929); and him'Itah ("it will diminish", H4591) in hiphil, targeting the people directly. The final verb, nashaMmu ("they will be desolate", H8074G), is niphal (passive/reflexive) and plural, shifting the subject once more to darkeichem ("your roads", H1870K) — the roads themselves become the desolate result, rather than being acted upon by an external agent. This grammatical shift from active causation to a passive resulting state marks the endpoint of the sequence.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders chaiYat ha-sadeh ("animal of the field", H2416C+H7704I) as "τὰ θηρία τὰ ἄγρια τῆς γῆς" ("the wild beasts of the earth"), specifying "wild" explicitly and using "earth" (γῆς) rather than "field." The LXX text as given shows a gap ("κ ὑμᾶς") where the verb corresponding to shikkeLah ("it will make childless", H7921A) would be expected, making the bereavement action unclear in this rendering. The Vulgate's "ad paucitatem cuncta redigant" ("reduce all things to scarcity") broadens him'Itah ("it will diminish", H4591), which in Hebrew has "you" ('etchem) as its object, into a more general reduction of "all things."