What Does Jeremiah 11:11 Mean?
Therefore thus says the LORD, Behold, I am bringing harm upon them, from which they cannot go out. And they will cry out to me, but I will not hear and respond to them.
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
Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.THE KEY
The Hebrew frames escape as “going out”: here both the exit and the response to the cry are closed.
THE MEANING
This verse holds before the reader judgment in its starkest form: calamity closes the way out, and a cry meets no hearing. The cry is real, yet the LORD says he will not receive it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that crying out always guarantees rescue or a response: here the cry is real, yet the LORD says he will not hear.
THE ROOT
לָצֵאת
la-tset
GROWS FROM
יצא
To go out, emerge, or come forth.
“go out” in this verse is la-tset. Their inability is expressed as a blocked going out: the calamity leaves no exit. The root makes the force of “escape” concrete as movement out from within what has closed around them.
ALSO GROWS
yotze: One who goes out or emerges.
יוֹצֵא
This branch names the very movement the verse says they cannot make.
motsa: An exit, outlet, or source.
מוֹצָא
The same root can name an outlet; here that possibility is shut.
אֶשְׁמַע
eshmaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, listen, or heed.
“hear and respond” in this verse is eshmaʿ. This root spans hearing, attending, and receiving what is heard. Here that reception is deliberately withheld; Psalm 34:17 uses the same root for the LORD hearing a cry.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear, listen, or heed.
שְׁמַע
The attentive sense of this root makes the refusal more than a sound failing to reach someone: the cry is not received.
shemuʿah: A report or tidings; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch names what arrives through hearing, sharpening the contrast with the cry that receives no response.
THE PATTERN
A plea does not itself reopen a way that judgment has closed.
They cry out, but there is none to deliver them; to the LORD, and he does not answer them.Then they shall cry out to the LORD, but he will not answer them. He shall hide his face from them in that time, as they have made their doings evil.When the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock on the door, saying, "Lord, Lord, open to us," and he will answer and say to you, "I do not know you, nor where you are from."THE THREAD
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.The verb rendered “heareth” is שָׁמַע (shamaʿ), the same root behind “hearken” in Jeremiah, and the verse pairs hearing with deliverance from trouble. The shared root makes Jeremiah’s refusal precise: hearing and an opening out are present here, while in Jeremiah both are withheld.
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