What Does Jeremiah 16:10 Mean?
And it shall be, when you declare all these words to this people, that they will say to you, Why has the LORD spoken all this great evil against us? What is our crookedness? What is our falling short, that we have missed the mark against the LORD our God?
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 it shall come to pass, when thou shalt shew this people all these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?THE KEY
The question about “our sin” shares its root with “we have committed,” binding the name of the missing to the act itself.
THE MEANING
You stand under a declaration of “great evil” and ask what crookedness and missing you have committed against the LORD your God. The verse holds the severity of what is spoken beside the searching question about your own action, without answering that question for you.
THE ROOT
חַטָּאתֵנוּ
ḥaṭṭāʾtēnû
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss, to miss the mark.
“missed the mark” in this verse is ḥaṭṭāʾtēnû. The people ask מַה חַטָּאתֵנוּ (mah ḥaṭṭāʾtēnû, “what is our sin or missing?”) and then אֲשֶׁר חָטָאנוּ (ʾasher ḥāṭāʾnû, “that we have sinned or missed”). The noun and verb share חטא, so the question turns from naming the missing to seeing the act as missing.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, to sin.
חָטָא
This verb appears in the verse as חָטָאנוּ (ḥāṭāʾnû, “we have sinned”); the question’s noun and the people’s action grow from the same root.
ḥōṭēʾ: One who sins, a sinner.
חֹטֵא
This form names the person through the same root, joining the act of missing to the one who does it.
דִּבֶּר
dibber
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; a word or matter spoken.
“pronounced” in this verse is dibber. The verse first says הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה (had-deḇārîm hāʾēlleh, “these words”), then says דִּבֶּר (dibber, “he spoke”). Both forms share דבר: the words the people hear and the act of speaking are held together in Hebrew.
ALSO GROWS
dāḇār: A word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
This noun shares דבר with “he spoke,” showing that speech can also be named as a word or matter.
dəḇārîm: Words or matters.
דְּבָרִים
This plural form appears earlier in the verse as “these words,” linking the people’s question to the speech they have just heard.
THE PATTERN
A people’s question about harm opens into a search of the path they have taken.
And it shall be, when you say, “Why does the LORD our God do all these things to us?” then you shall answer them, “As you have let go of me and served foreign gods in your land, so shall you serve strangers in a land that is not yours.”Let us feel for our ways and search them out, and turn back to the LORD.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
O LORD, though our crookednesses answer against us, act for the sake of your nature; for our turnings away are many, and we have missed the mark against you.The verb חָטָאנוּ (ḥāṭāʾnû, “we have sinned or missed”) shares the root חטא with חַטָּאתֵנוּ (ḥaṭṭāʾtēnû, “our sin or missing”) in this verse. The same communal “we” moves from asking what the missing is to naming that they have missed against the LORD.
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