What Does Jeremiah 25:32 Mean?
Thus says the LORD of hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the flanks of the earth.
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
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth.THE KEY
The verse turns a storm into a map of spreading calamity: what breaks out among peoples is roused from the earth’s farthest reaches.
THE MEANING
Calamity moves from people to people, crossing the borders that seem to contain it. A great storm is roused from the earth’s remote reaches, giving the upheaval a scale no single nation can hold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that disaster stays with the people or place where it begins dissolves here: the calamity travels from nation to nation.
THE ROOT
יֵעָר
yēʿār
GROWS FROM
עוּר
ʿ-w-r
To wake, rouse, or stir into motion.
“Raised up” carries the sense of being awakened or stirred into motion. The storm is pictured as roused from the earth’s extremities, becoming an active force that spreads.
ALSO GROWS
ʿūr: Wake or awaken.
עוּר
The basic verb reveals the movement from quiet or dormancy into activity.
hēʿîr: Rouse or awaken.
הֵעִיר
This causative form shows the root can describe something being stirred into motion.
סַעַר
saʿar
GROWS FROM
סער
s-ʿ-r
To storm or rage; a tempestuous force.
“whirlwind” in this verse is saʿar. The word carries the force of a storm, not merely a change in the weather. Its related form סוֹעֵר (sōʿēr, storming or raging) appears in Jeremiah 30:23, where the same storm-root describes a force that continues and strikes.
ALSO GROWS
saʿarah: Tempest or storm.
סַעֲרָה
The noun form keeps the storm’s force in view as a spreading event.
sōʿēr: Storming or raging.
סוֹעֵר
The participle turns the storm into an active, ongoing force rather than a static image.
רָעָה
raʿah
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To be bad or harmful; in a causative form, to do harm.
רָעָה (raʿah) can name moral evil as well as harm, trouble, or calamity. Here it moves “from nation to nation,” giving the word the force of disaster spreading among peoples.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad or evil.
רַע
This form names what is harmful or destructive.
hērēaʿ: Do harm or act wickedly.
הֵרֵעַ
The same root moves from a harmful quality into harmful action.
THE PATTERN
Calamity does not stay at its point of origin; it spreads across peoples and takes on the scale of a storm.
Then the LORD said to me, Out of the north the evil shall be opened upon all who settle the land.Our God comes, and will not hold his tongue. A fire devours before him, and a whirlwind storms fiercely all around him.And another horse goes out, fire-red, and to the one seated upon it is given to take wholeness from the earth, that they slaughter one another, and a great blade is given to him.THE THREAD
Look, the storm of the LORD has gone out burning, a whirling storm. It shall writhe upon the head of the wicked.Both verses use סַעַר (saʿar, storm or tempest), from סער (s-ʿ-r, to storm or rage). Jeremiah 30:23 calls the force “the whirlwind of the LORD” and describes it as continuing, opening this verse’s roused storm into an image of sustained upheaval.
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