What Does Jeremiah 18:5 Mean?
Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,
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
Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “word” also means “matter” or “thing”: the LORD’s speech arrives as something that happens, not merely something heard.
THE MEANING
The word of the LORD meets you as an arrival: it reaches you before you can shape it into your own message. It is not mute information; it comes with speech, entering your present as something that can be heard and answered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that divine speech is only an idea you must manufacture or decode alone; the verse presents it as something that comes and addresses you.
THE ROOT
דְבַר
devar
GROWS FROM
דבר
Speak; the related noun davar can mean a word, matter, or thing.
The verse names the LORD’s speech with דְבַר, from דבר: the same consonants underlie the verb “speak” and the noun “word, matter, or thing.” Hebrew holds utterance and what is spoken in one word-family, so the arriving word is more than information about life; it enters as a matter in your life.
ALSO GROWS
davar: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
This noun shares the root דבר and lets “the word” carry the added sense of a matter entering the hearer’s life.
dibber: Speak; he spoke.
דִּבֵּר
This verb shares the root’s consonants and shows the movement from speech itself to the word that comes.
THE PATTERN
The divine word moves toward a hearer and works in the life it reaches.
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.While Peter was still speaking these words, the Set-Apart Breath fell upon all who heard the word.And for this reason we also thank God without leaving a gap. For when you took hold of the word of God that you heard from us, you received it not as the word of humankind, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also works in you who trust.THE THREAD
By the word of the LORD the heavens are made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.Psalm 33:6 uses the same Hebrew word-family, דבר, and places the LORD’s word at the origin of what is made. Here that word arrives to a person; there, the same speech brings the heavens into being.
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