What Does Jeremiah 20:14 Mean?
Cursed be the day in which I was born; let not the day my mother bore me be blessed.
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
Cursed be the day wherein I was born: let not the day wherein my mother bare me be blessed.THE KEY
The English makes “I was born” and “my mother bare me” sound like two facts; Hebrew repeats one root, so the anguish reaches both the arrival and the act of bringing forth.
THE MEANING
This verse gives language to anguish that reaches beyond the present pain and places the beginning of one’s life under rejection. It refuses to cover that anguish with a blessing: the day of birth itself is named as cursed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that anguish must stop before questioning the beginning of one’s life.
THE ROOT
יֻלַּדְתִּי
yulladti
GROWS FROM
ילד
To bear, bring forth, or beget.
Both “I was born” and “my mother bare me” grow from ילד (yalad, to bear or beget). The repeated root holds the speaker’s arrival and the mother’s act of bringing him forth together as the focus of grief.
ALSO GROWS
yeled: Child.
יֶלֶד
The child and the act of bearing share the same root, linking the one brought forth with the act named in the verse.
moledet: Birthplace, native land, or kin.
מוֹלֶדֶת
The root can extend from birth to a person’s place and people of origin, showing how far this language of beginning can reach.
אָרוּר
arur
GROWS FROM
ארר
To curse or place under a curse.
“Cursed be the day” in this verse is arur. “Cursed” comes from אָרַר (arar, to curse); the verse gives that declaration to the day itself. The pain is voiced without being softened into a blessing.
ALSO GROWS
arar: To curse.
אָרַר
This is the verb behind the verse’s description of the day as cursed.
me'erah: Curse or calamity.
מְאֵרָה
This related form keeps the language of a curse present as an expressed condition, not merely a passing feeling.
בָּרוּךְ
barukh
GROWS FROM
ברך
To bless; the root is also linked with bending the knee.
“be blessed” in this verse is barukh. The final line sets the day’s curse beside the possibility of blessing. The root of “blessed” also appears in the word for “knee,” bringing a bodily gesture into the language that the speaker refuses to apply to this day.
ALSO GROWS
berekh: Knee.
בֶּרֶךְ
This related word carries the root’s bodily association into the contrast with cursing.
berakhah: Blessing.
בְּרָכָה
The verse uses this family of words to name the blessing the speaker cannot give to the day of birth.
THE PATTERN
When anguish overwhelms the present, scripture gives it language that reaches all the way back to birth.
Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, "A strong man has been conceived."The Son of Man goes as it is written of him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is handed over! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.THE THREAD
Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said, "A strong man has been conceived."Job’s “I was born” shares the root ילד (yalad, to bear or beget) with Jeremiah’s “I was born” and “my mother bare me.” Job asks for the birth-day to perish; Jeremiah refuses to call that day blessed.
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