What Does Jeremiah 14:1 Mean?
The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the drought.
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
The word of the LORD that came to Jeremiah concerning the dearth.THE KEY
Hebrew uses the same root for the LORD’s “word” and the “matters” of the drought, holding speech and circumstance together.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s word meets the dry condition directly; it concerns what is withheld. The verse brings lack into the open, where it can be named and seen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The dry season is beyond the reach of the LORD’s word.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
To speak; a word, matter, or affair.
The Hebrew has דְּבַר יְהוָה (devar YHWH, “the word of the LORD”) and עַל דִּבְרֵי הַבַּצֹּרֹת (al divrei ha-batsorot, “concerning the matters of the droughts”). English uses “word” and “dearth,” while Hebrew echoes one root in both speech and the circumstances being spoken about.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: Speak; spoke.
דִּבֵּר
This is the verb branch of the root: the LORD’s word is speech directed toward the drought’s concrete condition.
davar: Word, matter, or affair.
דָּבָר
The verse’s “matters” of the drought uses this same noun-root, joining the message to the event it addresses.
בַּצֹּרֶת
batsoreth
GROWS FROM
ב־צ־ר
Restrain or withhold; make inaccessible.
“the drought” in this verse is batsoreth. The Hebrew word for drought grows from a root whose range includes restraining or withholding. It gives the dearth the shade of rain held back, while the verse names that lack without yet resolving it.
ALSO GROWS
batsar: Restrain, withhold, or make inaccessible.
בָּצַר
This verb’s sense of withholding illuminates the drought as a condition in which rain is held back.
mivtsar: Fortress or stronghold.
מִבְצָר
This branch carries the root’s sense of something made inaccessible, echoing the drought’s withholding of water.
THE PATTERN
Scripture lets the lack in the land become visible and names the reach of that lack through a spoken word.
Elijah the Tishbite, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, said to Ahab, As the LORD God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.Behold, the days come, declares the Lord GOD, that I will send a hunger into the land, not a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for waters, but a hunger to hear and respond to the words of the LORD.Elijah was a man who underwent what we undergo, and he prayed with prayer that it would not rain, and it did not rain upon the earth for three years and six months.THE THREAD
Behold, the days come, declares the Lord GOD, that I will send a hunger into the land, not a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for waters, but a hunger to hear and respond to the words of the LORD.Amos repeats דָּבָר (davar, “word/matter”), the root echoed in Jeremiah’s “word” and “matters” of drought. There the lack is rain; here it reaches hearing itself, extending the image of drought into a famine of reception.
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