What Does Jeremiah 14:5 Mean?
Even the doe bore young in the field and left it, for there was no grass.
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
Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no grass.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “grass” also carries the act of sprouting, so the hind’s abandonment begins with the land’s failure to bring forth life.
THE MEANING
A hind gives birth in the field and leaves her young because there is no grass. The land’s barrenness reaches into the beginning of life itself, severing the newborn’s first bond.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Leaving does not always begin in indifference; here, the verse names the absence of food as the reason for the hind’s abandonment.
THE ROOT
דֶּשֶׁא
deshe
GROWS FROM
דשא
to sprout or put forth green growth
English “grass” names the growth, while its Hebrew root also carries the act of sprouting. The verse describes not only missing feed but a field with no new green life emerging.
ALSO GROWS
deshe: grass, green growth
דֶּשֶׁא
This is the word for what the hind’s field lacks.
tadshe: let it sprout or bring forth green growth
תַּדְשֵׁא
In Genesis 1:11, this verb describes the earth bringing forth grass; here, that sprouting is absent.
יָלְדָה
yaldah
GROWS FROM
ילד
to bear or bring forth
“bore young” in this verse is yaldah. The same root names both the act of bearing and what is born. The hind brings forth new life, but the verse immediately shows that birth alone cannot sustain it when the field has no grass.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: child, one brought forth
יֶלֶד
The noun shares the root of the hind’s act of giving birth.
toledot: generations, those brought forth
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The root extends from one birth to the generations that follow, giving this endangered newborn a place in a larger chain of life.
וְעָזוֹב
veʿazov
GROWS FROM
עזב
to leave or abandon
This root holds the act of leaving and the condition of being left. The verse names the lack of grass as the cause, keeping the abandonment within the material crisis surrounding the mother and her young.
ALSO GROWS
ʿozēv: one who leaves
עֹזֵב
This form names the one who departs, the mother’s side of the scene.
ʿazuvah: forsaken, abandoned
עֲזוּבָה
This form names the condition of what is left behind, the young one’s side of the scene.
THE PATTERN
When earthly provision fails, suffering reaches beyond people into animal life and the groaning of creation.
Who prepares for the raven its catch? When its young ones cry out to God, they wander for want of food.Even the beasts of the field pant toward you; for the channels of the waters are dried up, and fire has eaten the pastures of the wilderness.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
And God said, "Let the earth sprout green growth, the seed-bearing plant, and the fruit tree making fruit after its kind, whose seed is in it, upon the earth." And it was so.The Hebrew word-family behind “grass” here also forms the verb translated “bring forth grass” in Genesis 1:11. There, the earth sprouts green growth; here, its absence reaches a mother and her newborn.
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