What Does Jeremiah 24:2 Mean?
One basket had very good figs, like the first figs, and the other basket had very spoiled figs, which could not be eaten, so spoiled were they.
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
One basket had very good figs, even like the figs that are first ripe: and the other basket had very naughty figs, which could not be eaten, they were so bad.THE KEY
The baskets are divided by one stark measure: whether the fruit can become food.
THE MEANING
The verse sets two kinds of fruit before the reader: one is very good, while the other is so bad it cannot be eaten. Their difference reaches beyond appearance to what can be received as nourishment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that anything that looks like fruit is fit to nourish; this verse distinguishes between what can be eaten and what cannot.
THE ROOT
טוֹבוֹת
tovot
GROWS FROM
טוֹב
Good, pleasing, beneficial.
The word for the good figs carries the sense of what is beneficial, not merely attractive. The same root returns in Jeremiah 24:5 as לְטוֹבָה (letovah, “for good”), linking the figs’ quality with benefit.
ALSO GROWS
tovah: Goodness, benefit.
טוֹבָה
This feminine form carries the root’s sense of good as something beneficial.
letovah: For good, for benefit.
לְטוֹבָה
Jeremiah 24:5 uses this form when the good figs are described as being sent for good.
רָעוֹת
ra'ot
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
To be bad or harmful; to cause distress.
“very spoiled” in this verse is ra'ot. The root repeats in the phrase מֵרֹעַ (mero’a, “because of badness”): the figs are bad, and their badness makes them inedible. The repeated root makes the unusability part of the fruit’s condition, not simply a judgment about its appearance.
ALSO GROWS
ra: Bad, harmful, evil.
רַע
This related form names the quality attached to the figs in the basket.
ro'a: Badness, harm.
רֹעַ
This noun appears in the verse’s explanation for why the figs cannot be eaten.
הַבְּכֹרוֹת
habbekhorot
GROWS FROM
בכר
To be first; to bring forth first.
The good figs are compared with the earliest fruit to ripen. This root also names the firstborn and the firstfruits, adding the sense of first emergence to the comparison.
ALSO GROWS
bekhor: Firstborn.
בְּכוֹר
It shares the root’s sense of what comes first.
bikkurim: Firstfruits.
בִּכּוּרִים
Like the figs in the comparison, these are the first yield of what grows.
THE PATTERN
Fruit is distinguished by whether it can sustain life and by the quality of what it produces.
And out of the ground the LORD God caused to sprout every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowing good and evil.So every good tree makes good fruit, but the rotten tree makes evil fruit.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel. Like these good figs, so will I look upon the uncovered ones of Judah, whom I sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans for their good.The next verse uses the same root טוֹב (tov, “good”) when it says the good figs are sent “for their good.” The shared word extends the basket’s label beyond the fruit: its goodness remains tied to benefit even through being sent away.
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