What Does Jeremiah 2:7 Mean?
I brought you into a land of orchards, to eat its fruit and its goodness; but when you entered, you made my land unclean, and you set my inheritance for sickening things.
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
And I brought you into a plentiful country, to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof; but when ye entered, ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination.THE KEY
The place that feeds you can also bear the mark of what you bring into it.
THE MEANING
The verse places you inside abundance: the land offers fruit and goodness, and your actions can also leave it defiled. The inheritance is not an abstract possession; it is a living place that bears the condition your presence creates.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a place remains untouched by the people who inhabit it.
THE ROOT
טִמֵּא
ṭimmēʾ
GROWS FROM
טמא
To be unclean; in this verb form, to make unclean.
The verb is a causative form: the people do not merely encounter impurity; they make the land unclean. Hebrew keeps the act and the resulting condition inside one root, so the damage reaches the place itself.
ALSO GROWS
ṭāmēʾ: Unclean
טָמֵא
This names the condition the people bring upon the land.
ṭumʾāh: Uncleanness, impurity
טֻמְאָה
This noun names the state produced by the act of defiling.
פִּרְיָהּ
piryāh
GROWS FROM
פרה
To bear fruit, be fruitful.
The word for fruit grows from the same root as “be fruitful.” Fruit is the visible yield of the land’s capacity to produce, not simply a detached possession. The verse holds that living source beside the damage done to it.
ALSO GROWS
pārāh: To bear fruit, be fruitful
פָּרָה
The land’s fruit belongs to an ongoing capacity to produce.
perī: Fruit, produce
פְּרִי
The fruit you eat is the visible outcome of that fruitfulness.
תּוֹעֵבָה
tōʿēbāh
GROWS FROM
תעב
To abhor, detest; what is abhorrent.
“sickening things” in this verse is tōʿēbāh. The root speaks of abhorring, while the noun names what is abhorrent. The verse’s final movement is sharper than loss or damage: what is called God’s inheritance is made detestable.
ALSO GROWS
tāʿav: To abhor, detest
תָּעַב
The verb reveals the force carried by the noun: something treated as an abomination is regarded with abhorrence.
tōʿēv: Detestable, abhorrent
תּוֹעֵב
This related form describes the condition the inheritance is made to bear.
THE PATTERN
A place or gift meant to bear life can be made corrupt by how it is inhabited.
What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it? Why, when I waited for it to bring forth grapes, did it bring forth stinking grapes?Son of man, when the house of Israel settled in their own land, they defiled it by their way and by their doings. Their way was before me like the uncleanness of a removed woman.If anyone ruins the temple of God, God will ruin him, for God's temple is set apart, and you are that temple.THE THREAD
Son of man, when the house of Israel settled in their own land, they defiled it by their way and by their doings. Their way was before me like the uncleanness of a removed woman.Ezekiel uses the same Hebrew root, טמא, for “defiled,” and keeps the land as its object. The echo makes Jeremiah’s claim concrete: the inhabitants’ way and deeds leave the place itself bearing their defilement.
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