What Does Jeremiah 24:10 Mean?
And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence among them, until they run out from upon the ground that I gave to them and to their fathers.
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
And I will send the sword, the famine, and the pestilence, among them, till they be consumed from off the land that I gave unto them and to their fathers.THE KEY
The same Hebrew verb that can mean “send forth” or “release” here sends calamity among the people, showing how much depends on what is sent.
THE MEANING
The verse confronts the reader with the stark claim that the LORD sends sword, famine, and pestilence until a people are consumed from the land. Its force is bodily and communal: violence, hunger, disease, and the loss of home stand together in the sentence.
THE ROOT
וְשִׁלַּחְתִּי
wəshillaḥtî
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send forth; send away or release.
“send” in this verse is wəshillaḥtî. Here the verb means that sword, famine, and pestilence are sent among the people; its range does not soften the line. The same root can describe sending someone away or sending waters, but here what is sent brings devastation.
ALSO GROWS
shilluaḥ: Sending away, dismissal, or release.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch carries the root’s send-away sense, which sits beside the verse’s forceful image of calamities dispatched among the people.
Shiloach: The name of the sent waters, also known as Siloam.
שִׁלֹחַ
The root can name what is sent as flowing water; Jeremiah uses it for sword, famine, and pestilence.
THE PATTERN
When sword, hunger, and disease converge, scripture depicts judgment as the dismantling of life and a people’s place on the land.
The LORD shall make the pestilence cling to you, until he has run you out from off the ground, where you come to possess it.For thus says the Lord GOD, How much more when I send my four harmful judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the hunger, and the beast of harm, and the plague, to cut off from it man and beast?And I see, and look, a grass-green horse, and the name of the one seated upon it is Death, and Hades follows with him. And power is given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with the sword, with hunger, with death, and by the wild beasts of the earth.THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.Exodus uses the same root in Pharaoh’s command, “Let my people go,” where שָׁלַח (shalach) means send away or release. Jeremiah uses it for calamities sent among the people; the shared verb makes the change in what is sent, and the devastating consequence, impossible to miss.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us