What Does Jeremiah 17:2 Mean?
As their children remember their altars and their groves beside the green trees upon the raised hills.
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
Whilst their children remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills.THE KEY
The children remember not only their parents’ devotion but the altars themselves, whose name is rooted in sacrifice.
THE MEANING
What is placed at the center of worship becomes part of what children remember: here, altars and groves beneath green trees and on high hills. One generation’s devotion leaves visible marks that the next generation carries in memory.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A person’s devotion leaves no trace beyond the person who practices it.
THE ROOT
מִזְבְּחוֹתָם
mizbechotam
GROWS FROM
זבח
To slaughter or sacrifice.
The remembered altars are not passive landmarks: their name carries the act of sacrifice within it. The children inherit places organized around offering.
ALSO GROWS
zavaḥ: To slaughter or sacrifice.
זָבַח
The verb names the act at the root of what an altar is for.
zebaḥ: Sacrifice or sacrificial offering.
זֶבַח
This noun shows the offering and the altar belong to the same word family.
בִּזְכֹר
bizkhor
GROWS FROM
זכר
To remember or call to mind.
“remember” in this verse is bizkhor. Remembering shares its root with words for a memorial. The verse presents memory as something that can keep a practice present across generations.
ALSO GROWS
zikkaron: Remembrance or memorial.
זִכָּרוֹן
A memorial makes remembering tangible, like the altars named in the verse.
zeker: Remembrance or memorial name.
זֵכֶר
This branch connects remembering with what remains present in a name or reputation.
THE PATTERN
What is remembered and enacted in one generation becomes part of the next generation’s inherited landscape.
And you shall sharpen them to your children, and speak of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.So that the generation that follows might know them, the children yet to be born, who will rise and recount them to their children.And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.THE THREAD
And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and his brother, saying, Perceive the LORD, for they shall all perceive me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will release their crookedness, and their shortcomings I will remember no more.Both verses use זכר (z-k-r, zakar: remember). Here children keep the altars in memory; in 31:34 the LORD says, “I will remember their sin no more,” so the same root names both what a generation carries forward and what is no longer held against it.
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