Deuteronomy 28:42 Meaning and Explanation
“All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Short sentences can carry enormous weight. A single line here sweeps across an entire landscape, taking in orchards, vines, olives, and every field. The verse matters because it closes a series that had been listing losses one crop at a time, and because it shows the reach of what a swarm can do to a country that depended entirely on what grew within its own borders.
Beyond the grain fields, the trees themselves and everything the ground produces will be stripped by locusts, so the loss extends to every growing thing in the territory.
The Context of Deuteronomy 28:42
The verse belongs to the closing lines of the agricultural warnings in Deuteronomy 28, delivered as Israel camped east of the Jordan. Verses 38 through 41 had moved through grain, vines, olive trees, and children taken captive. Verse 42 gathers the whole scene into one statement before verse 43 turns to social reversal, where the stranger rises and the native sinks. The locust of verse 38 reappears here, framing the section at both ends. Beyond this, verses 45 through 48 will summarize the causes of everything described.
What Does Deuteronomy 28:42 Mean?
The scope of the line is what stands out. 'All thy trees' takes in the slow-growing wealth of a household, since a fig or olive tree represents decades of patience. 'Fruit of thy land' adds everything the ground brings forth, so the two phrases together leave nothing outside the sweep. The KJV places the verb at the end, 'shall the locust consume,' which lets the destruction fall last in the sentence like a shadow arriving over a field. One insect, named in the singular, stands against the entire produce of a nation. The imbalance is the point.
Trees mattered in ways that go past food. Deuteronomy 20:19 forbids cutting down fruit trees even during a siege, asking whether the tree of the field is a man's life to be besieged. That law shows how the book values orchards as long-term provision for generations. To lose the trees is to lose the future as well as the present harvest. Set beside the blessing in verse 11, where the fruit of the ground was to be plenteous, this verse completes the reversal. Everything promised as covenant abundance appears again here in the shape of covenant loss.
Joel takes this warning and turns it into a summons. His book opens with locusts stripping the land and the vine dried up and the fig tree languishing, then calls priests and people to a solemn assembly. What follows is a promise of grain, wine, and oil restored, the Spirit poured out on all flesh, and deliverance for all who call on the name of the Lord. Peter quotes that promise at Pentecost. A landscape stripped bare became, in God's hands, the setting for one of Scripture's largest promises of renewal.
Deuteronomy 28:42 in the Original Language
yarash (יָרַשׁ), 'consume' -- the usual sense of this verb is to take possession or to dispossess an occupant. Its use for the locust here pictures the swarm taking over the trees the way an invading people takes over a land.
Bible Verses Related to Deuteronomy 28:42
“When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them: for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down (for the tree of the field is man’s life) to employ them in the siege:”
- Deuteronomy 20:19
“And the LORD shall make thee plenteous in goods, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy ground, in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers to give thee.”
- Deuteronomy 28:11
“That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpiller eaten.”
- Joel 1:4
“I have smitten you with blasting and mildew: when your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmerworm devoured them: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the LORD.”
- Amos 4:9
Where Deuteronomy 28:42 Echoes in Scripture
Amos 4:9 reports that gardens, vineyards, fig trees, and olive trees were devoured, and it adds a refrain that runs through that chapter: the people still had not returned to the Lord. Amos reads such losses as summons rather than as bare punishment. The chapter shows what Deuteronomy 28 was always aiming at, since these warnings were spoken to turn hearts back while there was still time, and their tragedy is that the message went unheard.
How to Apply Deuteronomy 28:42 Today
There are losses that touch everything at once, where no corner of life is left untouched. A flood, a diagnosis, a collapse that takes the savings and the house and the plans together. This verse refuses to minimize that kind of total loss, and its place in a chapter that also holds blessing keeps despair from having the last word. We can prepare where preparation is possible, hold our long-term security in God rather than in what we have grown, and stand with those whose whole landscape has been stripped.
Reflection & Prayer
If everything we have grown were gone by autumn, what would remain that no swarm could reach? A prayer: Lord, my hands hold less than I like to think. Teach me to build on what cannot be eaten away, comfort those who have lost every visible thing, and keep my heart from panic when the fields go bare. Amen.