What Does Jeremiah 21:6 Mean?
And I will strike those who settle in this city, both man and beast. They shall die of a great plague.
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 will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence.THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “smite” also forms מַכָּה (makkah, “blow” or “plague”), so the verse’s violence is already inside its verb before “pestilence” names its form.
THE MEANING
The sentence speaks now with citywide force: people and animals are named together as exposed to the blow, and the text says they die of a great pestilence. Nothing in the wording narrows the death to soldiers, leaders, or one kind of life.
THE ROOT
הִכֵּיתִי
hikketi
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
to strike, beat, smite
The verb הִכֵּיתִי (hikketi, “I will smite”) comes from נכה, which also forms מַכָּה (makkah, “blow,” “wound,” or “plague”). The act of striking and the blow it produces belong to one word family; here, the separate word “pestilence” names the means by which the strike reaches both people and beasts.
ALSO GROWS
nakah: to strike or smite
נָכָה
This is the root verb behind “I will smite,” making the sentence’s force explicit.
makkah: a blow, wound, or plague
מַכָּה
This noun from the same root links the act of striking with the harm that follows, while the verse names pestilence as its instrument.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places human life within a wider creaturely field that shares both judgment and preservation.
Your alignment is like the mountains of God; your judgments are a great deep. O LORD, you deliver humankind and beast.Therefore the land shall mourn, and every one who settles in it shall wither, along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens. Even the fish of the sea shall be swept away.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon your cattle that are in the field, upon the horses, upon the donkeys, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep. There shall be a very heavy plague.Exodus 9:3 uses the same Hebrew noun דֶּבֶר (dever, “pestilence”), rendered “murrain” in the KJV, for a severe outbreak among livestock. Jeremiah repeats that word while naming people and beasts together, widening the scene from the herd to the city’s whole living population.
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