What Does Jeremiah 23:17 Mean?
They keep saying to those who spurn my word, The LORD has said, You shall have wholeness. To each one who walks in the stiffness of his own heart, they say, No harm shall come upon you.
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
They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walketh after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.THE KEY
The verse exposes a false wholeness that assures a stubborn heart its chosen path carries no harm.
THE MEANING
A voice claims the LORD’s authority while promising wholeness to those who despise him. It assures each person following the stubbornness of their own heart that no harm will reach them. The verse exposes how comforting words can leave the heart’s direction untouched.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that a promise spoken in the LORD’s name guarantees safety, even when the heart is set against him.
THE ROOT
שָׁלוֹם
shalom
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be complete or whole; to make whole.
The promised shalom is wholeness, not merely a feeling of calm. Its root also gives words for being complete and for repaying or making good what is owed, so this promise claims a deep state of restoration.
ALSO GROWS
shalem: Whole, complete, sound.
שָׁלֵם
This branch makes the completeness inside the promised peace visible.
shillem: To repay, recompense, or make full payment.
שִׁלֵּם
The same root links wholeness with making good what is due.
שְׁרִירוּת
sherirut
GROWS FROM
שרר
sh-r-r
To be firm, hard, or stubborn.
“stiffness” in this verse is sherirut. Here, “imagination” carries the sense of a stubborn inner bent: the heart is fixed on its own course. The root’s sense of firmness makes the promise pointed, it reassures settled resistance that no harm will follow.
ALSO GROWS
sherirut: Stubbornness, obstinacy.
שְׁרִירוּת
This is the verse’s word rendered “imagination”: a settled insistence within the heart.
sharir: Firm, strong.
שָׁרִיר
Its sense of firmness echoes the fixedness of the heart’s chosen direction.
רָעָה
ra'ah
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To be bad or to cause harm.
The word can name trouble or calamity as well as evil. The assurance here is that no harm will come upon the hearer, a sweeping guarantee that can mask the danger of the stubborn path.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil.
רַע
This branch shows the root’s sense of what is harmful or bad.
hēraʿ: To do harm or act badly.
הֵרֵעַ
The verb connects the word for harm with the act of causing it, sharpening the promise that nothing harmful will arrive.
THE PATTERN
False assurance can borrow the language of wholeness while leaving the danger untouched.
They heal the breaking of the daughter of my people with a light hand, saying, Wholeness, wholeness, when there is no wholeness.Because, even because they have made my people wander, saying, Wholeness; and there was no wholeness; and one built up a wall, and, behold, others daubed it with tasteless plaster.When they say, "Wholeness and firm footing," then sudden ruin stands over them, like labor pains upon a woman carrying a child in her womb, and they will not escape.THE THREAD
They heal the breaking of the daughter of my people with a light hand, saying, Wholeness, wholeness, when there is no wholeness.Both verses use shalom, the word for wholeness, to expose reassurance that does not make anyone whole. Jeremiah 6:14 names the gap directly: the word is spoken, but the wholeness it promises is absent.
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