What Does Jeremiah 23:28 Mean?
The prophet who has a dream, let him recount a dream; and whoever has my word, let him speak my word in truth. What is the chaff to the wheat? says the LORD.
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
The prophet that hath a dream, let him tell a dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the LORD.THE KEY
A dream can be named as a dream, but what carries God’s word must have the substance of grain, not chaff.
THE MEANING
You can recognize a dream for what it is without mistaking it for God’s word. What is spoken as God’s word is measured by emet, firm truth, and by whether it has the substance of grain rather than chaff.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that every vivid dream or spiritual-sounding message carries the same weight as God’s word.
THE ROOT
אֱמֶת
emet
GROWS FROM
אמן
aman
To be firm, reliable, or established.
“in truth” in this verse is emet. The Hebrew says to speak God’s words as truth: something firm and dependable, not merely something delivered with confidence. Beside the image of chaff and grain, this firmness is what gives a word substance.
ALSO GROWS
emunah: Trust; steadiness.
אֱמוּנָה
It shares the sense of firmness beneath emet, showing how truth can be something a person leans their full weight on.
amen: Firm; truly; so be it.
אָמֵן
Amen echoes the same rooted sense of what is established and can be relied upon.
ne’eman: Steady; dependable.
נֶאֱמָן
This branch describes reliability, the quality the verse joins to speaking God’s words.
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak; a spoken word or matter.
“word / speak” in this verse is davar. The verse repeats this root across both the word and the act of speaking: the one who has God’s davar is to speak it. Hebrew holds the message and its expression together, while emet names the quality that makes that expression true.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
It names the act of speaking that appears in the verse’s command to speak God’s word.
davar: Word; matter; thing.
דָּבָר
The same root can name both an utterance and a matter, giving God’s word the sense of something with substance.
dibbur: Speech; speaking.
דִּבּוּר
This branch keeps the spoken form connected to the word itself, echoing the verse’s repeated root.
THE PATTERN
What has substance endures and nourishes, while what is empty is carried away or separated from it.
The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the breath blows away.Whose winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean his threshing floor, and gather the wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn up with fire that cannot be put out.Test everything, and hold fast to what is good.THE THREAD
The head of your word is truth, and every judgment of your alignment stands for the ages.The Hebrew word translated “true” is emet, the same word Jeremiah uses where the KJV says “faithfully.” Here, emet is joined directly to God’s word, showing why Jeremiah’s image sets the grain of truth apart from the chaff.
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