What Does Jeremiah 10:15 Mean?
They are vapor, the work of straying. In the time of their visitation they shall lose the way.
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
They are vanity, and the work of errors: in the time of their visitation they shall perish.THE KEY
What is made from wandering cannot endure when its appointed reckoning comes.
THE MEANING
Things fashioned from delusion may look solid, yet the verse calls them fleeting and insubstantial. Their appointed visitation comes, and they perish. This is a present measure of what can and cannot last.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that something becomes enduring or real simply because human hands make it and people trust it.
THE ROOT
תַּעְתֻּעִים
taʿtuʿim
GROWS FROM
תעה
T-ʿ-H
To wander, stray, or go astray.
The word translated “errors” carries the shape of wandering off course. These works are not merely mistaken; they are shaped by a straying that leads into delusion.
ALSO GROWS
taʿah: To wander or stray.
תָּעָה
It exposes the movement beneath the “errors”: a departure from the true path.
toʿeh: One who wanders or has gone astray.
תֹּעֶה
The same root names both the wandering and the one caught in it.
taʿtuʿim: Delusions or deceptions.
תַּעְתֻּעִים
This is the form in the verse: what is made from straying can itself mislead.
הֶבֶל
hevel
GROWS FROM
הבל
H-B-L
Vapor or mist; by extension, what is fleeting and insubstantial.
“vapor” in this verse is hevel. “Vanity” here is not only emptiness as an idea; it evokes something that cannot hold its form. The works of straying may appear substantial, but their nature is fleeting.
ALSO GROWS
havalim: Vanities, fleeting things.
הֲבָלִים
The plural form in Ecclesiastes extends the image to things that lack lasting substance.
hevel: Vapor, mist, or vanity.
הֶבֶל
This is the same word used here, making the idols’ apparent solidity part of the illusion.
פְּקֻדָּה
pequddah
GROWS FROM
פקד
P-Q-D
To attend to, appoint, muster, or count.
The word translated “visitation” carries the sense of an appointed encounter or oversight. The verse locates the idols’ end at the time they are called to account: they perish.
ALSO GROWS
paqad: To attend to, appoint, muster, count, or visit.
פָּקַד
Its range brings appointment and accounting into the verse’s moment of visitation.
paqīd: An appointed official or overseer.
פָּקִיד
This branch carries the sense of assigned oversight that also lies beneath the visitation.
pequddah: Oversight, an appointed charge, or visitation.
פְּקֻדָּה
This is the verse’s word for the appointed moment when the works perish.
THE PATTERN
What is shaped from delusion has no endurance when its appointed reckoning comes.
Those who shape a hewn image are all a formless waste, and the things they desire will not profit. They are their own witnesses. They do not see, nor know, so that they will be ashamed.Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.Each one's work will be made visible, for the day will show it, because it is uncovered in fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.THE THREAD
Vapor of vapors, says the assembler. Vapor of vapors. All is vapor.Jeremiah calls the idols hevel; Ecclesiastes uses that same Hebrew word for what is fleeting and insubstantial. The shared root reveals why their apparent solidity cannot make them last.
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