What Does Jeremiah 16:2 Mean?
You shall not take a wife for yourself, and you shall not have sons or daughters in this place.
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
Thou shalt not take thee a wife, neither shalt thou have sons or daughters in this place.THE KEY
The prohibition is tied to “this place”: the verse makes a household’s future depend on whether life can take root where it stands.
THE MEANING
The verse places a severe boundary before the reader: here, no wife is taken and no sons or daughters are born. It shows how a place’s condition can reach into the most intimate future, making even an unborn household part of its warning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that private family life can remain untouched by the condition of the place where it is formed.
THE ROOT
מָקוֹם
maqom
GROWS FROM
קום
qum
Rise, stand, be established.
The word for place grows from the root for standing or rising: the verse does not treat setting as a blank backdrop, but as the ground on which a household can or cannot stand. “This place” binds the prohibition to a particular ground and condition.
ALSO GROWS
qum: Rise, stand.
קוּם
The root makes “place” feel like the ground on which life stands, sharpening the force of the words “in this place.”
heqim: Raise, establish.
הֵקִים
A household is something established; here, the verse names a place where that future is withheld.
תִּקַּח
tiqqach
GROWS FROM
לקח
laqach
Take, receive.
“take” in this verse is tiqqach. The root opens from taking to receiving, so this is not only an outward choice but an entry into shared life. Its negation reaches beyond the act of marriage to the future that such a bond receives.
ALSO GROWS
laqach: Take, receive.
לָקַח
The verb names the act the verse forbids: receiving a wife into a shared life.
leqach: Teaching, instruction; what is taken in.
לֶקַח
This branch carries the sense of receiving something inwardly, echoing how marriage opens a shared future that this verse closes.
בָּנִים
banim
GROWS FROM
בנה
banah
Build.
The word rendered “sons” is connected with the root for building: descendants are named in the language of what is built. Paired with daughters, the blocked future is not one child alone but the forming of a household line.
ALSO GROWS
banah: Build.
בָּנָה
The root brings the idea of building into the word for sons, showing the household as a future being formed.
binyan: Building, structure.
בִּנְיָן
This branch makes the force of “sons or daughters” visible as the withholding of a whole family structure.
THE PATTERN
A prophet’s household can become a visible sign of a condition that words alone cannot show.
The beginning of the word of the LORD by Hosea. And the LORD said to Hosea, Go, take for yourself a wife of harlotry, and her children, for the land has surely played the harlot, turning from following the LORD.Thus Ezekiel is a sign to you. According to all he has done, so shall you do. When this comes, you shall perceive that I am the Lord GOD.And Simeon spoke good over them, and said to Mary his mother, Look, this one is laid for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against.THE THREAD
Take wives, and bear sons and daughters, and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters, and multiply there and not shrink.Jeremiah 29:6 uses the same Hebrew verb לָקַח (laqach, “take”) for taking wives, then speaks of bearing sons and daughters. Beside “in this place,” it reveals how the same household future can be withheld or sustained according to the condition of the place.
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