What Does Jeremiah 23:10 Mean?
For the land is full of adulterers; because of the sworn curse the land mourns, and the pastures of the wilderness are dried up. Their running turns to harm, and their strength is not set upright.
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
For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their force is not right.THE KEY
The land is made a mourner, revealing that corrupt vows, evil momentum, and misused strength do not stop at human boundaries.
THE MEANING
Adultery fills the land, and because of swearing the land mourns; the pleasant places of the wilderness dry up, while the people’s course is evil and their force is not right. The verse speaks now of wrongdoing as something that reaches beyond the wrongdoer and damages the ground and the conditions of shared life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that wrongdoing and power stay private is undone here: the land itself mourns, and its places of life dry up.
THE ROOT
אָבְלָה
ʾāḇəlāh
GROWS FROM
אבל
ʾ-b-l
to mourn, lament
“mourneth” in this verse is ʾāḇəlāh. The land is not merely described as damaged; it is grammatically made the mourner. The shared root links the act of mourning with the one who mourns, making the land’s lament part of the verse’s claim about harm.
ALSO GROWS
ʾēḇel: mourning, lament
אֵבֶל
This noun gives a name to the grief the land itself bears in the verse.
ʾāḇēl: a mourner, one in mourning
אָבֵל
The same root can name the one who grieves, so the land is presented as a participant in grief rather than a neutral setting.
מְרוּצָתָם
merutsatam
GROWS FROM
רוץ
r-w-ts
to run, rush
What the KJV calls a “course” is a running: their conduct is an ongoing direction, not a static condition. The verse exposes the momentum of their actions as evil.
ALSO GROWS
rāts: one who runs, a runner
רָץ
This branch makes the motion inside “course” visible: the verse describes people actively moving along an evil way.
merutsah: running, course
מְרוּצָה
This noun shares the verse’s root and shows that “course” carries the sense of movement in progress.
גְּבוּרָתָם
gevuratam
GROWS FROM
גבר
g-b-r
to be strong, prevail
“force” in this verse is gevuratam. The root links the strength they wield with the mighty person who prevails. Here that capacity is not neutral: their power is explicitly judged “not right.”
ALSO GROWS
gibbor: a mighty person, a strong one
גִּבּוֹר
This branch names the person embodying the strength that the verse judges.
gevurah: might, strength
גְּבוּרָה
This is the strength itself, showing that the verse’s concern is how prevailing power is used.
THE PATTERN
When wrongdoing and distorted power saturate human life, the land itself bears the damage as a witness.
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.The earth mourns and withers, the world languishes and withers away, and the heights of the people of the earth droop.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
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.The Hebrew verb translated “mourns” here and the verb translated “mourn” in Hosea share the root אָבַל (ʾāḇal), “to mourn.” Hosea names the beasts, birds, and fish too, opening the scale of Jeremiah’s picture of a land that grieves and dries.
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