What Does Jeremiah 14:3 Mean?
Their mighty ones have sent their little ones to the waters, and they came to the pits and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and dismayed, and they covered their heads.
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 their nobles have sent their little ones to the waters: they came to the pits, and found no water; they returned with their vessels empty; they were ashamed and confounded, and covered their heads.THE KEY
The verse’s sent ones return empty, while the word sent by God does not: the difference is the source, not the act of sending.
THE MEANING
This verse names the moment you reach the place meant to provide and find it dry. Rank can send others in search of water, but cannot make a dry source give; the vessels come back empty, and shame covers the heads. The material lack also changes posture: the body folds beneath what it cannot obtain.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that authority, effort, or more people can guarantee provision when the source is empty.
THE ROOT
שָׁלְחוּ
shālḥû
GROWS FROM
שלח
shalach
To send, send forth, or release.
This root holds sending and releasing together: the nobles send the young out, but movement alone cannot make water appear. The water-name שִׁלֹחַ (Shiloach, “Sent”) carries the same root into a scene of water; here, the sending reaches only empty pits.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send forth, release.
שָׁלַח
The verse uses this root for the nobles’ act of sending; the action releases people toward a need but does not create the water they seek.
mishloaḥ: Sending, dispatch.
מִשְׁלוֹחַ
This noun keeps the root’s outward movement in view: a dispatch can begin a journey, but it cannot guarantee what awaits at its destination.
Shiloach: Siloam; “Sent.”
שִׁלֹחַ
In John 9:7, the pool’s name is glossed “Sent”; the name joins this sending-root to water that is present.
shulḥan: Table; provision set out.
שֻׁלְחָן
The table carries the image of provision extended to be received; here, those sent toward provision find none.
רֵיקָם
rēqām
GROWS FROM
ריק
rîq
Empty; to empty out.
“vessels empty” in this verse is rēqām. רֵיקָם (rēqām, empty-handed or without result) names the outcome of the journey, not only the lack in the pit. Isaiah 55:11 uses this same word for a sent word that does not return empty, making this scene the precise opposite of fulfilled sending.
ALSO GROWS
rēq: Empty, without contents.
רֵיק
The vessels are not merely at a dry place; they return with nothing in them.
hērîq: To empty out, pour out.
הֵרִיק
This verbal branch makes emptiness an outcome: the vessel that could carry water comes back emptied.
rēqām: Empty-handed, in vain, without result.
רֵיקָם
The word describes the failed return and reappears in Isaiah 55:11, where what is sent does not return without result.
THE PATTERN
Sending alone cannot supply what only a living source can give; what goes forth from that source does not return empty.
For my people have done two evils; they have let go of me, the spring of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, shattered cisterns that cannot grip water.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.But whoever drinks of the water I give never thirsts into the ages; the water I give becomes in him a spring of water leaping up into the life of the ages.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 uses the same Hebrew root שָׁלַח (shalach, send or release) and the same word רֵיקָם (rēqām, empty-handed): the sent word does not return empty. Here, human messengers come back empty from dry pits; Isaiah shows what changes when the sender’s word carries provision.
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