What Does Jeremiah 11:23 Mean?
And no remnant will be left to them, for I bring harm upon the men of Anathoth, the year of their visitation.
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
And there shall be no remnant of them: for I will bring evil upon the men of Anathoth, even the year of their visitation.THE KEY
The “visitation” is the appointed reckoning when no remnant remains.
THE MEANING
This verse puts the severity of judgment before you now: the men it names have no remnant, and harm arrives at an appointed time. “Visitation” names that arrival as a reckoning; the text leaves its devastating result unsoftened.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that divine visitation always brings comfort or rescue is contradicted here: this visitation brings judgment with no remnant.
THE ROOT
פְּקֻדָּתָם
pequddatam
GROWS FROM
פקד
פקד (paqad) means to attend to or visit; by context it can also mean to muster or number.
The root can describe both attending to someone and counting or mustering them. In “the year of their visitation,” visitation is an appointed reckoning: the moment they are brought into account and the declared outcome arrives.
ALSO GROWS
paqad: attend to, visit, muster, or number
פָּקַד
The verb holds together a visit and a reckoning: the people are attended to, and their fate is determined.
mifqad: muster or numbering
מִפְקָד
This branch makes the accounting sense audible beneath “visitation”: the reckoning gathers and counts those who face it.
שְׁאֵרִית
she'erit
GROWS FROM
שאר
שאר (sha’ar) means to remain or be left over.
The word names what remains after an event. So “no remnant” states the judgment’s totality: nothing is left over to survive it.
ALSO GROWS
sha'ar: remain or be left
שָׁאַר
The verb supplies the root sense behind “remnant”: what remains is what has been left.
she'ar: remainder or what remains
שְׁאָר
This branch reinforces the force of “no remnant”, no remainder is left after the appointed reckoning.
THE PATTERN
A divine visitation is an appointed moment when what is attended to reaches its outcome, promise fulfilled or wrongdoing reckoned.
And the LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah as he had spoken.Now therefore go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Look, my messenger shall walk before you; but in the day I visit, I will visit their falling short upon them.Keep your walk beautiful among the nations, so that, though they speak against you as doers of badness, they may watch your beautiful works and give weight to God in the day of watching over.THE THREAD
Therefore thus says the LORD God of Israel against the shepherds who feed my people; you have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and you have not visited them. Behold, I will visit upon you the harm of your deeds, says the LORD.The same root appears first for the shepherds’ failure to attend the people and then for the announced reckoning. That echo opens up the force of “visitation” here: it is an attending that brings the outcome into view.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us