What Does Jeremiah 25:14 Mean?
For many nations and great kings shall serve them also, and I will repay them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands.
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
For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands.THE KEY
The word rendered “recompense” shares its root with “wholeness,” so repayment reads as a measure brought to completion by what the hands have done.
THE MEANING
Power cannot make its actions disappear: deeds and the work of one’s own hands become the measure returned, whether the actor is a ruler or a nation. The verse speaks now wherever someone assumes that using others carries no answer.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it dissolves is that a nation or ruler can use others and remain beyond the reach of consequence.
THE ROOT
וְשִׁלַּמְתִּי
veshillamti
GROWS FROM
שלם
Be complete or whole; in this verb form, make good or repay.
“repay” in this verse is veshillamti. The verb for recompensing shares its root with shalom, wholeness. Repayment carries the sense of a measure brought to completion, and the verse names that measure as their deeds and the work of their own hands.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, completeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
It reveals the root shared with recompense: the return completes a measure.
shillem: He repaid or made good
שִׁלֵּם
This is the same repayment sense expressed in the verse.
shalem: Whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
It carries the root’s sense of a measure made complete.
פָּעֳלָם
po'alam
GROWS FROM
פעל
Do, work, act.
The verse names their deeds as work, then echoes that idea with the work of their own hands. Its repeated language binds the return to what they themselves produce.
ALSO GROWS
po'el: Worker, one who acts
פֹּעֵל
The branch names the one whose actions the verse holds to account.
pe'ullah: Work, labor, deed
פְּעֻלָּה
It keeps the emphasis on actions as work done and attributable to their makers.
THE PATTERN
What people do becomes the measure by which their actions return to them.
Even as I have seen, those who plow crookedness and sow toil reap it.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.Who will give back to each one according to his works.THE THREAD
I will repay Babylon, and all who settle in Chaldea, for all their evil that they have made in Zion before your eyes, says the LORD.The same verb, וְשִׁלַּמְתִּי (veshillamti, “I will repay”), appears here in Jeremiah 51:24. The shared root שלם (sh-l-m, “be whole; repay”) joins both verses in the image of actions returning to complete their measure.
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