What Does Jeremiah 11:13 Mean?
For according to the count of your cities your gods were, O Judah, and according to the count of the streets of Jerusalem you have set up altars to that shameful thing, altars to send up smoke to Baal.
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
For according to the number of thy cities were thy gods, O Judah; and according to the number of the streets of Jerusalem have ye set up altars to that shameful thing, even altars to burn incense unto Baal.THE KEY
The altar’s root names sacrifice, so the verse shows allegiance taking shape in what a community repeatedly offers.
THE MEANING
Your shared landscape is shaped by repeated allegiance: city after city and street after street become places where devotion is made visible. The verse names these altars as offerings to Baal and calls their object shameful, exposing what the community publicly honors.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that devotion is only inward or private: what a community serves becomes visible in the places and practices it repeats.
THE ROOT
מִזְבְּחוֹת
mizbeḥot
GROWS FROM
זבח
To slaughter or sacrifice.
“altars” in this verse is mizbeḥot. The altar’s name carries the same consonants as sacrifice: it is named for the act done there. Here those places multiply until the streets themselves are marked by offerings to Baal.
ALSO GROWS
zāvaḥ: To slaughter or sacrifice.
זָבַח
The verb shares the altar’s root, joining the built place to the act performed there.
zevaḥ: A sacrifice or sacrificial offering.
זֶבַח
This noun makes clear that an altar’s meaning is bound to what is offered upon it.
בַּעַל
baʿal
GROWS FROM
בעל
To own or exercise mastery; as a noun, an owner or lord.
Baal is also the Hebrew word for a master or owner, so the name carries a claim of possession. The verse’s many altars spread that claim through the public life of Judah.
ALSO GROWS
bāʿal: To own, rule, or exercise mastery.
בָּעַל
The verb shows the claim of mastery carried in the name Baal.
bəʿālîm: Owners or masters; also used for Baals.
בְּעָלִים
The plural form echoes the verse’s multiplication of gods across the cities.
מִסְפָּר
mispār
GROWS FROM
ספר
To count, enumerate, or recount.
The repeated count sets the cities beside their gods and the streets beside their altars. Allegiance is presented as a measurable pattern spread across the whole landscape.
ALSO GROWS
sāfar: To count or recount.
סָפַר
The verb makes the verse’s repeated numbering an act of enumeration.
səfîrāh: Counting or enumeration.
סְפִירָה
This noun carries the same counting root and underscores the verse’s one-to-one measure of places and altars.
THE PATTERN
What a community treats as divine becomes visible in the places and objects that fill its shared life.
For they also built for themselves high places, and standing stones, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree.Their land is also filled with nothings; they bow down to the work of their own hands, to what their own fingers have made.Now while Paul waited for them in Athens, his breath was sharpened within him, when he saw the city wholly full of images.THE THREAD
You shall make an altar of soil for me, and upon it you shall slaughter your rising offerings and your wholeness offerings, your sheep and your herd. In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you, and I will bless you.The altar מִזְבֵּחַ (mizbēaḥ) and the verb זָבַח (zāvaḥ), “to sacrifice,” share the root זבח, joining the place to the act performed there. Exodus directs the offering “unto me”; Jeremiah shows altars directed to Baal, revealing that an altar’s presence alone does not determine its allegiance.
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