What Does Jeremiah 25:7 Mean?
Yet you have not heard and responded to me, says the LORD, so that you might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, to your own hurt.
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
Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.THE KEY
The hands that keep making while the ear refuses to hear and respond are building the very harm that turns back on their maker.
THE MEANING
You can refuse to hear and respond to the LORD while continuing to make with your hands; this verse holds those acts together. What your hands produce turns toward your own harm. The damage is bound to the making, not separate from it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that refusing the LORD can leave your own life untouched.
THE ROOT
שְׁמַעְתֶּם
shemaʿtem
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen, and, where response is implied, respond.
“heard and responded” in this verse is shemaʿtem. The Hebrew verb שְׁמַעְתֶּם (shemaʿtem, you heard or hearkened), from שׁמע (shamaʿ, hear, listen, respond), holds hearing together with response. The verse’s sharpness is that the ear refuses the LORD even while the hands keep producing.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: To hear or listen, with response carried by the context.
שָׁמַע
This is the root behind “hearkened”; the refusal is more than sound failing to reach the ear.
shomeaʿ: One who hears or listens.
שֹׁמֵעַ
The related form names the listener, keeping the act of hearing tied to the person who receives the message.
מַעֲשֵׂה
maʿaseh
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿ-s-h
Do, make, bring about.
“works of your hands” in this verse is maʿaseh. מַעֲשֵׂה (maʿaseh, work or deed) comes from עשה (ʿasah, do or make): the hands’ work is what they have produced. Psalm 115:8 uses this same root for those who make idols and says they become like what they make, showing how the maker can be changed by the making.
ALSO GROWS
ʿasah: To do or make.
עָשָׂה
The noun “works” grows from the verb for doing and making, tying the hands’ actions to their products.
ʿoseh: A doer or maker.
עֹשֶׂה
The related form names the maker; the verse’s phrase “to your own hurt” points to the consequence returning to the one who makes.
THE PATTERN
What human hands make into an object of trust cannot deliver its maker and can bend the maker toward its own limits.
Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.And the remainder of it he makes into a god, his hewn image, and falls down to it, and bows down, and prays to it, and says, "Snatch me, for you are my god."who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and bowed down and served the creation beside the one who created, who is praised for the ages. Amen.THE THREAD
Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.Jeremiah’s מַעֲשֵׂה (maʿaseh, work) and Psalm 115:8’s “make” share the root עשה (ʿasah, do or make). The Psalm makes the return named in Jeremiah visible: the makers become like what they have made, so the harm is bound to the work itself.
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