What Does Jeremiah 17:21 Mean?
Thus says the LORD, Guard your living souls, and do not lift a burden on the sabbath day, nor carry it in through the gates of Jerusalem.
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
Thus saith the LORD; Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem;THE KEY
Yerushalayim, the city of wholeness, is where the burden is stopped, because Hebrew names the load from the very act of carrying it.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to your living self at a threshold: the load does not pass through Jerusalem’s gates on the Sabbath. Rest takes visible form in what is not carried in. The city’s name carries the language of wholeness, and its gates mark where the burden stops.
THE ROOT
מַשָּׂא
massa
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
Lift, carry, bear.
The noun מַשָּׂא (massa, a burden or load) grows from נָשָׂא (nasa, to lift or carry): the burden is what gets carried. The same verb can describe bearing wrongdoing in the idiom for forgiveness, so its range includes carrying something away as well as carrying it in.
ALSO GROWS
massa: Burden, load.
מַשָּׂא
This is the verse’s word for the thing the Sabbath boundary keeps from being carried through the gate.
nasa avon: Bear or carry wrongdoing; used idiomatically for forgive.
נָשָׂא עָוֹן
The same seed that names carrying a physical load can describe bearing wrongdoing away.
הִשָּׁמְרוּ
hishameru
GROWS FROM
שמר
shamar
Guard, watch over, keep.
The opening warning comes from shamar: guard yourselves. It addresses the living self as something watched over, while the verse’s gates make guarding concrete in the same passage.
ALSO GROWS
shomer: Watchman, guardian.
שֹׁמֵר
The person who watches over a gate embodies the guarding named by this root.
mishmeret: Charge, guard duty, watch.
מִשְׁמֶרֶת
The word can name an entrusted watch, giving “take heed” the sense of active care.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
shalem
Be whole, complete; wholeness.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The name Yerushalayim carries the language of shalom, wholeness. Here its gates become the threshold where a burden is kept from crossing on the Sabbath.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
This is the wholeness carried within the city’s name.
Yerushalayim: Jerusalem; the city associated here with twofold wholeness.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
The verse places its Sabbath boundary at the gates of the city of wholeness.
THE PATTERN
Rest becomes visible when a boundary stops labor and burdens from being carried across it.
But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your livestock, nor your sojourner who is within your gates.And it came to pass, that when the shadows began to fall upon the gates of Jerusalem before the sabbath, I said, Let the gates be shut, and let them not be opened until after the sabbath. And I stood some of my servants at the gates, that no load be brought in on the sabbath day.Come to me, all you who toil and have been loaded down, and I will give you rest.THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.Jeremiah’s מַשָּׂא (massa, burden) comes from נָשָׂא (nasa, carry or bear), the verb Isaiah uses for bearing griefs. The shared root places the stopped load at Jerusalem’s gate beside griefs that are borne.
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