What Does Jeremiah 23:29 Mean?
Is not my word like fire? says the LORD; and like a hammer that shatters the rock?
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
Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?THE KEY
The word is not merely a message about what is hard; it reaches and breaks what is hard.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s word meets you now as fire and as a hammer against rock: it exposes what cannot remain and fractures what has hardened. The word is not distant information; it is an active utterance whose effect reaches into the solid places of your life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what has hardened in you is beyond reach is undone here: the verse gives the word force enough to break rock.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak or utter; the noun carries the senses of word, matter, thing, or affair.
Davar holds spoken word and matter or thing within one word-family: the utterance is not detached from what it addresses. Here, the fire and hammer show that the word acts upon what is hard; it does not merely describe it.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: Spoke; uttered.
דִּבֵּר
This verb names the act behind the word: what is spoken is an active utterance, not inert information.
dibbur: Speech; speaking.
דִּבּוּר
This branch keeps the focus on speech itself, linking the word’s force in the verse to the act of uttering it.
THE PATTERN
The voice of God is not inert speech; it acts upon what it addresses.
The voice of the LORD splits the flames of fire.So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.THE THREAD
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word, דָּבָר (davar, “word” or “matter”), for the word that goes out and accomplishes what it is sent to do. Jeremiah’s fire and hammer reveal how that accomplishment meets hardness: it burns and breaks through.
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