What Does Jeremiah 23:37 Mean?
Thus shall you say to the prophet, What has the LORD answered you? and, What has the LORD spoken?
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
Thus shalt thou say to the prophet, What hath the LORD answered thee? and, What hath the LORD spoken?THE KEY
A prophet’s authority rests in the message’s source: the question is what the LORD has actually answered and spoken, not what the prophet claims.
THE MEANING
This verse makes the source of claimed spiritual speech a live question: What has the LORD answered, and what has the LORD spoken? The words must be traced to the LORD rather than accepted simply because someone speaks as a prophet.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A confident claim of revelation is not itself proof that the LORD has spoken.
THE ROOT
דִּבֶּר
dibber
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak or utter; its related noun can mean a word or a matter.
The Hebrew verb for “spoken” grows from the same root as the noun for “word” or “matter.” Speech and the substance being spoken about belong together: the question is not only whether a prophet speaks, but what the LORD’s speech actually carries.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: A spoken word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
The same root joins an utterance with the matter it carries, so the LORD’s word is not detached from its substance.
devarim: Words or matters; the plural form of דָּבָר (dābār).
דְּבָרִים
The plural preserves the root’s joining of speech and matter, opening the question toward the actual content of a claimed message.
עָנָה
ʿānâ
GROWS FROM
ענה
ʿ-n-h
To answer or respond.
“answered” in this verse is ʿānâ. The verse asks about a response from the LORD, not merely a message attributed to him. The question keeps the prophet’s speech answerable to a source beyond the prophet.
ALSO GROWS
maʿaneh: An answer or response.
מַעֲנֶה
This noun from the same root names the response the verse asks the prophet to report.
ʿānâ: To answer or respond.
עָנָה
The verb places the LORD as the one answering, keeping the origin of the message in view.
THE PATTERN
A message that claims to come from God is accountable to what God actually speaks.
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.But the prophet, who boils over to speak a word in my nature, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the nature of other gods, that one dies.Beloved, do not lean your weight on every breath, but test the breaths, whether they come out of God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.THE THREAD
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.Here “spoken” is דִּבֶּר (dibber, “he spoke”), while “word” is דָּבָר (dābār, “word, matter”); both grow from דבר (d-b-r). The image of wheat and chaff makes the distinction tangible: the question is whether the message carries the LORD’s word.
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