What Does Jeremiah 25:27 Mean?
So you shall say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel. Drink, and be drunk, and vomit, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword that I will send among you.
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
Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you.THE KEY
The Hebrew root behind “rise” also means “stand” and “be established,” so “rise no more” closes off a return to footing, not just another upward motion.
THE MEANING
Judgment arrives as a force sent into the midst, and its effect moves through the body: drinking becomes drunkenness, vomiting, and falling. The verse presents that collapse as final; no standing again follows it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that every collapse is temporary and that recovery is guaranteed.
THE ROOT
תָקֻמוּ
taqumu
GROWS FROM
קום
Rise, stand, be established.
This root carries more than upward motion: it also speaks of standing and being established. “Rise no more” therefore closes off not only another moment upright, but the return of footing and stability.
ALSO GROWS
heqim: Raise up, establish.
הֵקִים
This causative form makes the root’s connection between rising and establishment explicit; here, that possibility is shut down.
maqom: Place.
מָקוֹם
The word is formed from the same root associated with standing; it sharpens the image of a lost place to stand.
שֹׁלֵחַ
sholēaḥ from shalach
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send forth; release, let go.
“send” in this verse is sholēaḥ from shalach. The sword is not simply found among them; it is sent into their midst. The root holds sending together with releasing, so the image is of judgment let loose in their shared space.
ALSO GROWS
shillēaḥ: Send away, release.
שִׁלֵּחַ
This form makes the releasing sense audible beside the verse’s sent sword.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name of a watercourse.
שִׁלֹחַ
The same root can name what is sent outward; here, what is sent is a sword.
THE PATTERN
The cup of divine judgment is pictured as something people must drink through to its bitter end.
For a cup is in the hand of the LORD, and the wine foams, full and mixed; he pours from it, but its dregs, all the wicked of the earth, drain and drink.Awake, awake, rise, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his burning. You have drunk the dregs of the cup of reeling, and drained them.And he himself drinks from the wine of the seething of God, poured out undiluted into the cup of his swelling. And he is tormented in fire and sulfur before the face of the set-apart messengers, and before the face of the Lamb.THE THREAD
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.Both verses use שָׁלַח (shalach, send): Jeremiah has a sword sent into the midst, while the psalm has a word sent to heal and deliver. The shared root makes the instrument of what is sent unmistakable: here it is a sword; there, a word.
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