What Does Jeremiah 15:21 Mean?
I will pull you out of the hand of those who do harm, and I will ransom you from the palm of the ruthless.
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 I will deliver thee out of the hand of the wicked, and I will redeem thee out of the hand of the terrible.THE KEY
The verse’s two verbs make rescue both extraction from a hostile hand and reclamation from the grip that claims you.
THE MEANING
This promise meets the reader inside the feeling of being held by cruelty or terror: God pulls the reader from the wicked’s hand and reclaims them from the violent grip. The hostile hand is real, but it does not have the final claim on the reader.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The grip of a cruel or terrifying power is permanent, and what it holds is beyond reclaiming.
THE ROOT
וְהִצַּלְתִּיךָ
wehitzaltikha
GROWS FROM
נצל
natsal: to snatch away, rescue, or deliver.
“pull you out of” in this verse is wehitzaltikha. This root’s range connects rescue with taking away: it can describe pulling a person from danger and, in another form, stripping an enemy of spoil. Here, deliverance removes the reader from a grasp that looked like possession.
ALSO GROWS
nitsol: a rescued person; a survivor
נִצּוֹל
The rescue-root can name the person after escape, so the promise describes a changed condition as well as an act of deliverance.
vayenatslu: they stripped or despoiled
וַיְנַצְּלוּ
The same consonants in another form describe taking spoil away; here the root’s rescue sense likewise removes a person from another’s hold.
וּפְדִתִיךָ
ufeditikha
GROWS FROM
פדה
padah: to ransom or redeem, freeing someone from another’s claim.
This second verb adds the image of ransom: the reader is not only taken out of danger but reclaimed from a force that holds them. Together, the roots make deliverance both escape and recovery.
ALSO GROWS
padah: to ransom or redeem
פָּדָה
The basic verb carries the release-from-a-claim sense beneath the verse’s promise to redeem.
podeh: a redeemer; one who ransoms
פֹּדֶה
The active form names the one enacting release, highlighting God as the agent who reclaims the reader.
THE PATTERN
When danger encloses a person, divine rescue removes them from its reach and beyond its claim.
For he snatches you from the snare of the bird-catcher, from the plague of ruin.Then they cry out to the LORD in their narrowness, and he snatches them out of their narrow places.And the Lord will bring me out of every evil work, and will deliver me into his heavenly governance; to whom let there be weight for the ages of the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
The aligned cry out, and the LORD hears, and snatches them out of all their narrow places.The Hebrew verb for “delivereth” is נצל (natsal, rescue), the same root as Jeremiah’s promise. There, rescue meets a cry amid troubles; here, it meets a person under wicked and violent hands, letting one root speak across different forms of threat.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us