What Does Jeremiah 14:18 Mean?
If I go out into the field, behold the pierced by the sword! And if I come into the city, behold those sick with hunger! Yes, both the prophet and the priest roam into a land they do not know.
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
If I go forth into the field, then behold the slain with the sword! and if I enter into the city, then behold them that are sick with famine! yea, both the prophet and the priest go about into a land that they know not.THE KEY
The deepest calamity is a land so disordered that even its guides no longer know where they are.
THE MEANING
When every direction feels unsafe, the field holds the slain and the city holds famine; no untouched place appears. Even the prophet and priest move through a land they do not recognize, sharing the same disorientation as everyone else.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that sacred roles or the right location guarantee refuge: prophet and priest are also caught in the collapse.
THE ROOT
יָדְעוּ
yādeʿû
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know or recognize through encounter.
“do not know” in this verse is yādeʿû. Here, the prophet and priest do not recognize the land through which they move. The same root gives the language for knowledge itself, so the line suggests more than missing facts: their orientation has broken down.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know, recognize, or perceive.
יָדַע
This is the verb in the verse: they do not know the land they are traversing.
da'at: Knowledge or perception.
דַּעַת
This noun from the same root shows how knowing grows into understanding; that recognition is absent here.
חֶרֶב
ḥerev
GROWS FROM
חרב
The word for sword is linked to a root meaning to dry up or lay waste.
The Hebrew word family lets the sword carry the sound of desolation. Beside famine, the blade and hunger read as different forms of a land stripped bare.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārav: To dry up or become desolate.
חָרַב
Its shared root links the sword in the field with a land left depleted.
ḥōrev: Dryness or drought.
חֹרֶב
The word for drought echoes the sword’s root beside the verse’s famine.
סָחֲרוּ
sāḥărû
GROWS FROM
סחר
To move about or circulate; also, to trade.
“roam” in this verse is sāḥărû. The verb carries a sense of movement through a place, while its word family includes merchants and trade. The prophet and priest are in motion through the land, yet movement has not become recognition or belonging.
ALSO GROWS
sōḥēr: A merchant or trader.
סֹחֵר
The related word evokes circulation through a place without necessarily being rooted in it.
səḥōrāh: Merchandise or trade.
סְחֹרָה
This branch shares the root’s sense of movement and circulation, sharpening the contrast with knowing the land.
THE PATTERN
When violence and hunger enter the land together, no ordinary place remains a shelter from the collapse.
The sword is outside, and the plague and the hunger inside. The one in the field shall die by the sword, and the one in the city, hunger and plague shall eat him.Better are the pierced by the sword than the pierced by hunger, for these are emptied and split open for want of the fruits of the field.And I see, and look, a grass-green horse, and the name of the one seated upon it is Death, and Hades follows with him. And power is given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, with hunger, with death, and by the wild beasts of the earth.THE THREAD
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge, and I will reject you, so that you shall be no priest to me. Since you have forgotten the instruction of your God, I will also forget your children.Jeremiah’s line ends with prophet and priest moving through a land they do not know; Hosea names lack of knowledge as destruction and loss of priesthood. The shared ידע root reveals the collapse of knowing inside the very roles expected to carry it.
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