What Does Jeremiah 22:17 Mean?
But your eyes and your heart are for nothing but your plunder, and to pour out clean blood, and for pressing, and for violence, to do it.
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
But thine eyes and thine heart are not but for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression, and for violence, to do it.THE KEY
Here, covetousness is the gaze and heart organized around gain, until what is taken from another becomes its profit.
THE MEANING
Your eyes and heart can become wholly occupied with gain. The verse names the outward expression of that aim plainly: innocent bloodshed, oppression, and violence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that wanting more is harmless as long as it stays inside you. The verse joins that appetite to the taking of innocent life and the doing of oppression and violence.
THE ROOT
בִּצְעֶךָ
bitsʿekha
GROWS FROM
בצע
בצע (bātsaʿ): to cut off or break off; also to gain or profit, especially through taking.
“plunder” in this verse is bitsʿekha. The Hebrew behind “covetousness” is בִּצְעֶךָ (bitsʿekha, your gain or profit), from a root that also carries the sense of cutting off or gaining. The word-family holds the sought profit and the taking it can involve close together, while the verse names the harm as bloodshed, oppression, and violence.
ALSO GROWS
bōtsēaʿ: One who gains; greedy for gain.
בֹּצֵעַ
Proverbs uses this form for the person whose pursuit of gain takes life, making the appetite a way of being as well as a desire.
bātsaʿ: To cut off or break off; also to gain or profit.
בָּצַע
The verb holds taking and gain in one word-family, echoing how this verse sets desired profit beside bloodshed and violence.
הָעֹשֶׁק
hāʿōsheq
GROWS FROM
עשק
עשק (ʿāshaq): to oppress, extort, or defraud.
“pressing” in this verse is hāʿōsheq. This root names both the oppressive taking and the harm that falls on the person exploited. Beside “your gain,” it makes the relationship between profit and another person’s loss visible in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
ʿōsheq: Oppression, extortion, exploitation.
עֹשֶׁק
This noun appears in the verse and names the harm as more than a private intention: it is the oppressive condition produced by taking.
ʿāshūq: Oppressed, extorted, defrauded.
עָשׁוּק
This form names the person on whom the root’s action falls, keeping the harmed person within the same word-family as the oppression.
הַנָּקִי
hannāqî
GROWS FROM
נקה
נקה (nāqâ): to be clean, clear, or free from guilt.
The word rendered “innocent” carries the sense of being clean or free from guilt. The verse therefore marks the bloodshed as falling on someone who bears no guilt for the violence done to them.
ALSO GROWS
nāqî: Clean, innocent, free from guilt.
נָקִי
This adjective is the core of the phrase “innocent blood,” placing the victim’s lack of guilt directly in the wording.
niqqāh: To be clean or cleared.
נִקָּה
This verbal form carries the sense of being cleared or freed from guilt, illuminating the innocence named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
When gain becomes the heart’s aim, it can turn into taking from others and the harm of those exploited.
So are the paths of every one who cuts for gain; it takes the living soul of its owners.They covet fields and tear them away, and houses, and carry them off. So they press a man and his house, even a man and his inheritance.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
So are the paths of every one who cuts for gain; it takes the living soul of its owners.The same Hebrew root appears twice in Proverbs: בֹּצֵעַ (bōtsēaʿ, one greedy for gain) and בָּצַע (bātsaʿ, to gain or profit). Proverbs says this way takes the owners’ lives, making explicit the cost Jeremiah names as innocent bloodshed, oppression, and violence.
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