What Does Jeremiah 10:13 Mean?
When he gives his voice, a roar of waters is in the heavens, and he lifts the clouds from the ends of the earth. He makes lightnings for the rain, and brings out breath from his storehouses.
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
When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of his treasures.THE KEY
The wind is רוּחַ (ruach, wind/breath): breath itself appears as a force brought out from a hidden treasury.
THE MEANING
The verse presents weather as movement from hidden source into visible life: God’s voice fills the heavens with waters, raises clouds from the earth’s edge, and brings lightning with rain. Wind, רוּחַ (ruach, wind/breath), comes out of God’s storehouses, joining the air moving above you with the breath moving through you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse dissolves the idea that the forces shaping the world are ownerless and without a source; it presents waters, rain, lightning, and wind as held within God’s ordering.
THE ROOT
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
ruach
Moving air: wind or breath.
רוּחַ is one Hebrew word that can name wind and breath, joining the air in the heavens with the air within a living body. Here that moving air comes out of a storehouse, like breath released into open space.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Wind; breath.
רוּחַ
This is the word in the verse, holding the movement of the atmosphere and the body’s breath within one word.
ravach: To have room; to find relief.
רָוַח
Its consonants echo the opening of space: the wind moves out from a bounded storehouse into the open.
אֹצְרוֹתָיו
otsrotav
GROWS FROM
אצר
atsar
To store up or gather into reserve.
The word translated “treasures” points to storehouses, places where something is held in reserve. The wind comes forth from what has been stored, so the verse pictures weather as release from a hidden source.
ALSO GROWS
atsar: To store up; to gather into reserve.
אָצַר
The verb names the act behind the storehouse imagery in the verse.
otsar: A treasury; a storehouse.
אוֹצָר
This noun names the place from which the wind is brought forth.
נְשִׂאִים
nesi'im
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
To lift, carry, or bear.
The word for the rising clouds belongs to the lift-and-carry family. The water borne upward and the rain that comes down are two movements in one water-carrying cycle.
ALSO GROWS
nasa: To lift; to carry; to bear.
נָשָׂא
This verb gives the cloud word its sense of something borne upward.
massa: A load; a burden; something carried.
מַשָּׂא
This branch makes the carrying sense concrete: the clouds bear water before it falls as rain.
THE PATTERN
The forces that sustain visible life emerge from a source beyond ordinary sight and move within God’s ordering.
By the word of the LORD the heavens are made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.Have you entered the storehouses of the snow? Or have you seen the storehouses of the hail,Yet he did not leave himself without witness, doing good, giving you rain from heaven and seasons that bear fruit, filling your hearts with food and gladness.THE THREAD
He sends out his word and melts them; he causes his breath to blow, and the waters flow.Both verses use רוּחַ (ruach, wind/breath), placing moving air beside the waters. Psalm 147 makes the sequence plain: the word goes out, the wind blows, and the waters flow; Jeremiah shows that wind emerging from a hidden storehouse.
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