What Does Jeremiah 11:17 Mean?
For the LORD of hosts, who planted you, has spoken calamity against you, because of the evil of the house of Israel and the house of Judah, which they have done to themselves, to provoke me by sending 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 the LORD of hosts, that planted thee, hath pronounced evil against thee, for the evil of the house of Israel and of the house of Judah, which they have done against themselves to provoke me to anger in offering incense unto Baal.THE KEY
The Hebrew uses one root for the wrong they do and the harm spoken against them, saying their devotion has already turned against themselves.
THE MEANING
God’s planting does not make you immune to what your own choices cultivate; the text says the people’s deeds are against themselves. It holds the LORD’s anger at devotion to Baal in full view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
God’s planting makes me immune to the consequences of what I choose to serve.
THE ROOT
רָעָה
ra’ah
GROWS FROM
רעע
To be bad, do harm, or bring trouble.
“evil” in this verse is ra’ah. The two forms share the same root: one names the harm spoken against the people, the other the wrong they have done. The verse binds conduct to consequence in a single word-family, while stating that their actions are already against themselves.
ALSO GROWS
ra: Bad, evil, harmful.
רַע
This form shows the root’s range for naming what is harmful or wrong.
ra’ah: Evil, trouble, or calamity.
רָעָה
The verse uses this form both for the trouble pronounced against them and for the wrong behind it.
הַנּוֹטֵעַ
han-notea
GROWS FROM
נטע
To plant or set into the ground for growth.
“planted” in this verse is han-notea. The LORD is named as the planter, the source of the people’s establishment. Planting does not guarantee that later growth is untouched by the consequences of what is cultivated.
ALSO GROWS
neta: A plant or planting.
נֵטַע
The branch makes the planted people part of an image of living growth.
matta: A plantation or planted place.
מַטָּע
This branch keeps the focus on a life or place set out to grow.
THE PATTERN
What people set in motion ripens into consequences that return to them.
For they sow breath, and they will reap the whirlwind. It has no stalk. The sprout will yield no meal. If it yields, strangers will swallow it up.He digs a pit and hollows it out, and falls into the pit he works. His toil turns back upon his head, and his violence comes down upon his skull.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
Yet I planted you a choice vine, wholly a seed of truth. How then have you been overturned to me, into the wild shoots of a foreign vine?The same Hebrew root, נטע (nata, plant), names the LORD’s planting here and in Jeremiah 2:21. That verse opens this one further: being planted well does not erase what a life cultivates afterward.
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