What Does Jeremiah 18:15 Mean?
Because my people has forgotten me, they have sent up smoke to emptiness, and they have made them stumble in their ways, from the paths of the ages, to walk a way that is not heaped up.
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
Because my people hath forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity, and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up;THE KEY
The verse links devotion to emptiness with a road that has not been raised: the path itself becomes the stumbling block.
THE MEANING
Forgetting God turns your attention toward what is empty, and that devotion begins shaping your steps. You can be led away from pathways of the ages onto a road that has not been raised and prepared, where stumbling is built into the route. The disruption reaches beyond you: the path you follow can make others stumble too.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that forgetting God is private and harmless: what you give yourself to can shape a route on which others stumble.
THE ROOT
וַיַּכְשִׁלוּם
vayakhshilum
GROWS FROM
כשל
kashal
To stumble, stagger, or fail; in the causative form, to make someone stumble.
“made them stumble” in this verse is vayakhshilum. The verb is causative: the people do not merely stumble themselves; they make others stumble in their ways. The same root names both the act of causing a fall and מִכְשׁוֹל (mikhshol, a stumbling block), joining the agent and the obstruction in one word family.
ALSO GROWS
mikhshol: An obstacle that causes a fall.
מִכְשׁוֹל
The root names the obstruction itself, linking the people’s misdirection to what trips those walking the route.
hikhshil: To make someone stumble or fail.
הִכְשִׁיל
This causative form makes the effect on others explicit, as it is in the verse.
סְלוּלָה
selulah
GROWS FROM
סלל
salal
To raise or build up; in a road context, to prepare a highway.
“a way that is not heaped up” in this verse is selulah. The phrase describes a road that has not been raised or built into a prepared way. The same root names a highway and the act of raising one, so the verse contrasts pathways of the ages with a route lacking the work that makes it passable.
ALSO GROWS
mesillah: A prepared or raised road.
מְסִלָּה
It names the kind of route that the unraised way in the verse lacks.
sollu: Raise up or prepare a highway.
סֹלּוּ
This form shows that a way can be made passable by raising and preparing it.
THE PATTERN
When the good way is abandoned, unprepared routes carry stumbling forward until the way is cleared and raised again.
Thus says the LORD, Stand upon the ways and look, and ask for the paths of the ages. Where is the good way? Walk in it, and you will find a place to settle for your living souls. But they said, We will not walk in it.And it shall be said, Heap up, heap up, clear the way, lift up the stumbling block out of the way of my people.Let them go. They are blind guides of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.THE THREAD
And it shall be said, Heap up, heap up, clear the way, lift up the stumbling block out of the way of my people.Jeremiah’s “caused them to stumble” and “not cast up” return together here: the stumbling block is removed as the road is raised and prepared. The paired actions make restoration concrete, clear what trips the people, then make the way passable.
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