What Does Jeremiah 24:3 Mean?
And the LORD said to me, What do you see, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs. The good figs, very good, and the spoiled, very spoiled, which cannot be eaten, so spoiled are 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
Then said the LORD unto me, What seest thou, Jeremiah? And I said, Figs; the good figs, very good; and the evil, very evil, that cannot be eaten, they are so evil.THE KEY
The vision makes discernment physical: the figs’ quality is seen in whether they can be received as food.
THE MEANING
The question lands in your present: what do you see? The scene holds two conditions side by side, fruit that is very good and fruit so bad that it cannot be eaten. What is visible carries a consequence for what can be received.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that anything called fruit is fit to eat: the vision names fruit so bad that it cannot be eaten.
THE ROOT
הָרָעוֹת
haraʿot
GROWS FROM
רעע
raʿaʿ
To be bad or to cause harm.
“evil” in this verse is haraʿot. The verse intensifies the description of the bad figs, then ties their condition directly to being uneatable. Their quality has an observable consequence: they are unfit to receive.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil.
רַע
This adjective names the condition of the inedible figs; it carries the same basic sense as the root.
hēraʿ: Did harm; acted badly.
הֵרַע
The same root can describe harmful action, so badness here carries a consequence, not just a label.
תֵּאָכַלְנָה
teʾakhalnah
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
To eat or consume.
The distinction in the vision reaches the act of taking the fruit in: these figs cannot be eaten because of their condition. The same root connects eating with food, keeping the image grounded in what can enter the body.
ALSO GROWS
maʾakhal: Food.
מַאֲכָל
This noun from the same root names what is fit to eat, sharpening the verse’s contrast with fruit that cannot be eaten.
ʾakhal: To eat.
אָכַל
This verb names the act the verse rules out for the bad figs.
טֹבוֹת
tovot
GROWS FROM
טוב
ṭov
To be good or beneficial.
The Hebrew repeats the description of the good figs and intensifies it as very good. Goodness appears in their actual condition, held in sharp contrast with figs that are very bad.
ALSO GROWS
heitiv: Did good; benefited.
הֵיטִיב
This verb grows from the same root and shows goodness as something that benefits.
tovah: Goodness; benefit.
טוֹבָה
This form makes explicit the quality the verse sees in the good figs.
THE PATTERN
Fruit makes quality visible through what it yields and whether it can be received.
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.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.So every good tree makes good fruit, but the rotten tree makes evil fruit.THE THREAD
But from the tree of knowing good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.Genesis joins the same Hebrew roots for good, טוֹב (ṭov), and bad or evil, רַע (raʿ), with the root אכל (ʾ-k-l), meaning to eat. Jeremiah uses that good-and-evil pair to distinguish the figs, then names the bad ones as uneatable; the shared roots make the distinction concrete in what can be received.
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