What Does Jeremiah 14:20 Mean?
We know, O LORD, our wickedness, and the crookedness of our fathers, for we have missed the mark against you.
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
We acknowledge, O LORD, our wickedness, and the iniquity of our fathers: for we have sinned against thee.THE KEY
The confession begins with seeing what is crooked and owns the missing as a direct rupture with the LORD.
THE MEANING
You name your own wrongdoing and the crookedness carried through your fathers before the LORD. The wrongdoing has a lineage, and the confession remains personal and direct: “we have sinned against thee.”
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that inherited wrongdoing erases personal responsibility, or that owning your own wrongdoing requires pretending it began with you.
THE ROOT
חָטָאנוּ
ḥāṭāʾnû
GROWS FROM
חטא
ḥṭʾ
To miss, fail, or sin.
“missed the mark” in this verse is ḥāṭāʾnû. The same root names the act of missing, the missing itself, and the one who misses. The related noun חַטָּאת can also mean an offering for the missing, so the root holds both the failure and what addresses it.
ALSO GROWS
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Sin; an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
It shows that the root can name both the failure and an offering associated with it.
ḥōṭēʾ: One who sins; a sinner.
חוֹטֵא
The root names not only a deed but the person who commits it, fitting the verse’s “we have sinned.”
יָדַעְנוּ
yādaʿnû
GROWS FROM
ידע
ydʿ
To know or perceive.
The Hebrew verb rendered “acknowledge” is literally “we know.” Confession begins with recognizing what is true, before the verse names the missing as an act against the LORD.
ALSO GROWS
yōdēaʿ: One who knows or perceives.
יֹדֵעַ
This form makes the root’s knowing an active perception, not merely a label for wrongdoing.
yediʿāh: Knowledge or recognition.
יְדִיעָה
This noun shares the root’s consonants and shows the knowing named in the verse as a state of recognition.
רִשְׁעֵנוּ
rišʿēnû
GROWS FROM
רשע
ršʿ
To act wickedly; wrongdoing or guilt.
The root also names the wicked or guilty person, joining the condition to an accountable actor. Here the word is “our wickedness,” followed by “we have sinned”: wrongdoing is named as owned.
ALSO GROWS
rāšāʿ: A wicked or guilty person.
רָשָׁע
It shares the root consonants and names the person associated with the wrongdoing.
rišʿāh: Wickedness or wrongdoing.
רִשְׁעָה
This related form names the wrongdoing itself, echoing the verse’s “our wickedness.”
THE PATTERN
Confession brings wrongdoing into the open before God instead of leaving it hidden.
I make my falling short known to you, and my crookedness I do not cover. I say, I will speak my rebellion into the open before the LORD, and you release the crookedness of my falling short. Selah.O LORD, to us belongs the burning of faces, to our kings, our chiefs, and our fathers, because we have missed against you.If we speak our shortcomings into the open, he is steady and aligned, to release our shortcomings, and to cleanse us from all crookedness.THE THREAD
Against you alone have I missed the mark, and done the evil in your eyes, so that you are aligned in your word and clear when you judge.Both verses use the Hebrew root חטא for “sinned”: Jeremiah says “we have sinned,” while this verse says “have I sinned.” The shared root keeps the missing relational, it is named as being “against thee,” not merely as a private defect.
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