What Does Jeremiah 2:27 Mean?
Saying to the wood, You are my father, and to the stone, You bore us. For they have turned their nape to me, and not their faces. But in the time of their harm they say, Rise and deliver us.
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
Saying to a stock, Thou art my father; and to a stone, Thou hast brought me forth: for they have turned their back unto me, and not their face: but in the time of their trouble they will say, Arise, and save us.THE KEY
The verse exposes the contradiction of making lifeless things your parent, then demanding they rise and deliver you.
THE MEANING
You call a made thing the source that brought you forth, turn your back on the LORD, and then ask that claimed source to rise and deliver you when trouble closes in. The verse holds those divided movements together in the present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that whatever you treat as your source of life can also rescue you, even when it has no life of its own.
THE ROOT
יְלִדְתָּנִי
yelidtani
GROWS FROM
י־ל־ד
to bear, beget, or give birth
“bore us” in this verse is yelidtani. This is the language of birth and parentage: the stone is addressed as the one who gave birth, not merely as something that made an object. The wordplay אֶבֶן (even, stone) as אָב (av, father) + בֵּן (ben, son) compresses parent and child into the very object now called a parent.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
The child belongs to the same word-family as the act of bringing forth, making the stone’s claimed parenthood especially stark.
toledot: generations, descendants
תּוֹלְדוֹת
The word for generations grows from the language of birth, echoing the lineage the stone is falsely asked to supply.
הוֹשִׁיעֵנוּ
hoshiʿenu
GROWS FROM
י־ש־ע
to deliver, bringing someone out of constriction toward spaciousness
“deliver” in this verse is hoshiʿenu. The cry is for deliverance, a way out when trouble presses in. The contradiction is that the people ask a lifeless object to rise and carry out the very deliverance it cannot give.
ALSO GROWS
yeshuah: deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
The plea in the verse is for the movement out of trouble that this root names.
moshia: deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
The root can name both the act of deliverance and the one who delivers, sharpening the question of whom the people are asking to arise.
THE PATTERN
A created thing cannot bear the life and deliverance role assigned to it, and trouble exposes the mismatch.
And the remainder of it he makes into a god, his hewn image, and falls down to it, and bows down, and prays to it, and says, "Snatch me, for you are my god."Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and bowed down and served the creation beside the one who created, who is praised for the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
Rise, O LORD; bring me out, O my God, for you strike all my enemies upon the cheekbone; you break the teeth of the restless ones.The words arise and save recur, and the plea for deliverance comes from the root י־ש־ע (yasha, deliver). Here the cry is addressed to the LORD, making the contrast in Jeremiah turn on who is asked to arise.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us