What Does Jeremiah 14:15 Mean?
Therefore thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who prophesy in my nature, and I did not send them, yet they say, Sword and hunger shall not be in this land. By sword and hunger shall those prophets be used up.
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
Therefore thus saith the LORD concerning the prophets that prophesy in my name, and I sent them not, yet they say, Sword and famine shall not be in this land; By sword and famine shall those prophets be consumed.THE KEY
The LORD’s שֵׁם (shem, name as nature) can be claimed by a voice he never שָׁלַח (shalach, sent forth).
THE MEANING
The phrase “in my name” is שְׁמִי (shemi, “my name”): a claim to speak from the LORD’s nature, while the verse separates that claim from actually being sent. The promise that sword and famine will not be in the land does not remove them; those same forces consume the prophets who denied them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A speaker invoking God’s name is necessarily speaking with God’s authority. The verse breaks that equation: invocation and sending are not the same thing.
THE ROOT
שְׁלַחְתִּים
shelaḥtîm
GROWS FROM
שׁלח
š-l-ḥ
To send forth, release, or let go.
“did not send them” in this verse is shelaḥtîm. The verse’s hinge is not whether the speakers use the LORD’s name, but whether they are sent from him. שָׁלַח (shalach, send forth) makes sending a real movement from a source, not a title a speaker can give himself.
ALSO GROWS
shilleaḥ: Send away, release, let go.
שִׁלֵּחַ
This branch carries the root’s sense of release: a true sending comes from the one who releases the messenger.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of the waters of Shiloah.
שִׁלֹחַ
The sent waters make sending concrete as movement from a source; here the speakers claim a source the LORD says they do not have.
יִתַּמּוּ
yittammū
GROWS FROM
תמם
t-m-m
To be complete, finished, or brought to an end.
“used up” in this verse is yittammū. The Hebrew verb under “consumed” means they come to an end. The same root can describe what is complete and whole; here the prophets reach their end by the very sword and famine they declare absent.
ALSO GROWS
tamim: Complete, whole, sound.
תָּמִים
This branch shows the root’s sense of reaching fullness, which can also mean reaching a final end.
tom: Completeness, integrity.
תֹּם
The root can name a state of completeness; in this verse, the prophets’ course is instead completed through the violence they deny.
THE PATTERN
A claim to speak in God’s name is tested by its source and its truth, not by the sacred wording it wears.
When the prophet speaks in the nature of the LORD, if the word does not come to be, nor arrive, it is the word the LORD has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it in a boiling over. You shall not cower from him.Thus says the LORD of hosts, Do not hear and respond to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they make you vapor. They speak a sight of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your nature, and by it throw out demons, and in it do many works of strength?THE THREAD
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.Isaiah shares the root שׁלח (shalach, send forth) with Jeremiah’s “I sent them not.” Isaiah describes what God sends going out with purpose and accomplishing it, sharpening the contrast between a voice that claims the LORD’s name and a word that actually comes from his sending.
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