What Does Jeremiah 14:16 Mean?
And the people to whom they prophesy shall be thrown out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the hunger and the sword; and they shall have none to bury them, they, their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters, for I will pour their evil upon them.
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 the people to whom they prophesy shall be cast out in the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and they shall have none to bury them, them, their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters: for I will pour their wickedness upon them.THE KEY
The verse turns wickedness into something poured onto a people, until even their dead lie uncovered in the streets.
THE MEANING
The verse names a human catastrophe without covering it: famine and violence leave bodies in the streets, with no one to bury them. It holds the people’s wickedness in the same image as what is poured upon them, joining wrongdoing and calamity in a single sentence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that reassuring prophecy can shield a community from famine, violence, or the cost of wrongdoing. The verse says those words do not cover what is happening.
THE ROOT
רָעָתָם
ra'atham
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
To be bad or bring harm; words from this root can name wrongdoing and calamity.
The word rendered wickedness belongs to a word family that can also describe harm or disaster. That overlap lets the verse hold both shades together: the people’s evil and the calamity poured upon them.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ah: Evil or wrongdoing
רָעָה
This is the sense KJV gives as wickedness in the verse.
ra'ah: Harm, trouble, or calamity
רָעָה
This sense brings the devastation around the word into view without erasing its moral weight.
וְשָׁפַכְתִּי
veshafakhti
GROWS FROM
שׁפך
To pour out, spill, or shed.
“pour” in this verse is veshafakhti. The Hebrew verb can describe liquid poured out and blood shed. English uses different images here and in Genesis 9:6, while the shared root makes the force of the action audible beneath both.
ALSO GROWS
shaphakh: Pour out
שָׁפַךְ
This is the verb used for what is poured upon the people in this verse.
shofekh dam: Shed blood
שֹׁפֵךְ דָּם
Genesis 9:6 uses this same root for bloodshed, joining pouring and spilling life.
THE PATTERN
The language of pouring makes violence or judgment concrete as something spilled into the world or falling upon people.
Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD. Look, the burning of my anger and my heat shall be poured out upon this place, upon the human and upon the beast, upon the trees of the field and upon the fruit of the soil, and it shall burn, and shall not be put out.And I hear a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven messengers, Go your ways, and pour out the bowls of the burning of God's anger upon the earth.THE THREAD
Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.The Hebrew verb behind pour in Jeremiah is also used here for shed blood. The shared root connects two images English separates: what is poured out can be blood spilled into the open.
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