What Does Jeremiah 11:2 Mean?
Hear and respond to the words of this covenant, and speak to the men of Judah, and to those who settle in Jerusalem.
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
Hear ye the words of this covenant, and speak unto the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem;THE KEY
In Hebrew, “words” and “speak” share one root, so the covenant is already moving from hearing into a voice.
THE MEANING
The covenant reaches you as something to hear and then voice among others. The verse places you inside that movement: listening receives the words, and speech carries them into shared life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that hearing is passive or complete while the words stay private: here, what is heard is immediately given voice.
THE ROOT
דִּבְרֵי
divrê
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
To speak or declare; as a noun, a word or matter.
“words / speak” in this verse is divrê. The covenant’s “words” and the command to “speak” share the same three-letter root. English makes them sound like separate things, while Hebrew joins what is received to the act of giving it voice.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: Word, matter, or thing
דָּבָר
This is the noun behind “words”; the covenant is heard as something carried into the lives people share.
dibber: Spoke or declared
דִּבֵּר
This verb shares the root of “words,” joining the covenant’s content to the act of speaking it.
שִׁמְעוּ
shim'u
GROWS FROM
ש־מ־ע
To hear, listen, and attend; where response is implied, to hear and respond.
“Hear and respond” in this verse is shim'u. The command is more than receiving sound: the verse shows hearing turning toward response as its words are spoken onward. The movement from listening to speech sits inside the verse itself.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: Hear, listen, or attend
שָׁמַע
This is the root of the opening command, whose response takes shape in the following command to speak.
shemuʿah: Report or news
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch names what is heard and carried onward, echoing the movement from hearing the covenant to voicing it.
THE PATTERN
A covenant word becomes communal through hearing that answers and speech that carries it onward.
And he took the scroll of the covenant, and called it out in the ears of the people, and they said, All that the LORD has said we will do, and we will hear and respond.And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
And he took the scroll of the covenant, and called it out in the ears of the people, and they said, All that the LORD has said we will do, and we will hear and respond.Exodus 24:7 places covenant reading beside the people’s answer. Its Hebrew closes with וְנִשְׁמָע (venishma, “and we will hear/respond”), from ש־מ־ע (sh-m-ʿ; shamaʿ, “hear/listen”), the root of Jeremiah’s opening command; the KJV renders it “be obedient.”
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