What Does Jeremiah 20:5 Mean?
Moreover, I will give all the strength of this city, and all its toil, and all its precious things, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies, who shall plunder them, and take them, and carry them to Babylon.
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
Moreover I will deliver all the strength of this city, and all the labours thereof, and all the precious things thereof, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah will I give into the hand of their enemies, which shall spoil them, and take them, and carry them to Babylon.THE KEY
The repeated verb נתן (natan, “give” or “place”) makes the city’s strength and treasure sound less like secure possessions than things already passing into other hands.
THE MEANING
You see a city whose strength, labor, prized things, and royal reserves are placed into its enemies’ hands. Its accumulated power does not keep its possessions in place: they are seized and carried to Babylon. The repeated act of giving makes the transfer the passage’s center.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that a city’s accumulated wealth and strength guarantee that its possessions will remain secure.
THE ROOT
וְנָתַתִּי
we-natatti
GROWS FROM
נתן
To give, set, or place.
“I will give” in this verse is we-natatti. The verse uses this root twice: first for giving the city’s strength, then for placing its treasures into enemy hands. The same act of giving can transfer what was held by one into the possession of another.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: Gift; a thing given.
מַתָּנָה
The noun keeps the root’s sense of transfer: what is given changes hands.
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
The root verb’s range includes placement, echoed by the verse’s image of the treasures being put into the enemies’ hands.
אֹצְרוֹת
otsarot
GROWS FROM
אצר
To store up or gather into reserve.
The word for the kings’ treasures names what has been stored up. Here the reserve cannot remain in storage: it becomes spoil carried away.
ALSO GROWS
atsar: To store up or gather.
אָצַר
This verb shows the action behind a treasury: collecting things into a reserve.
otsar: Storehouse or treasury.
אֹצָר
The treasury is the gathered reserve itself, and this verse shows it changing from stored wealth into captured goods.
יְגִיעֶיהָ
yegi'eha
GROWS FROM
יגע
To toil or grow weary.
“all its toil” in this verse is yegi'eha. The city’s labors carry the sense of exertion and what that exertion produces. The verse places the fruits of that work alongside its valuables and reserves, all subject to the same transfer.
ALSO GROWS
yagaʿ: To toil or grow weary.
יָגַע
The verb gives the labor its bodily cost: effort spent until weariness.
yageaʿ: Weary or worn out.
יָגֵעַ
This related form keeps exhaustion inside the word family, so the city’s labor is more than an abstract asset, it carries the weight of effort.
THE PATTERN
What is accumulated as security can leave its owner’s hands when the decisive hour comes.
Look, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and all that your fathers have stored until this day, will be carried to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD.And he brought out from there all the storehouses of the house of the LORD, and the storehouses of the king's house, and cut all the vessels of gold which Solomon king of Israel had made in the temple of the LORD, as the LORD had said.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
Look, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and all that your fathers have stored until this day, will be carried to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the LORD.Jeremiah names the kings’ treasuries with אֹצְרוֹת (otsarot, “treasuries”), from אצר (atsar, “store up”); Isaiah speaks of what has been “laid up in store” before it is carried to Babylon. The shared root reveals the turn: what was gathered as a reserve becomes cargo.
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