What Does Jeremiah 27:10 Mean?
For they prophesy a lie to you, to push you far from your land, and that I would thrust you out, and that you would lose the way.
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 they prophesy a lie unto you, to remove you far from your land; and that I should drive you out, and ye should perish.THE KEY
A lie is exposed by its destination: it pulls you from your ground and carries you toward loss.
THE MEANING
This verse names false prophecy by where it leads: it aims to remove you from your ground, and the verse names being driven out and perishing as the consequence. Its warning speaks to you now about words that dislodge you and end in loss.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A message is not safe simply because it speaks in the language of prophecy; it can be aimed at uprooting you and ending in ruin.
THE ROOT
שֶׁקֶר
sheqer
GROWS FROM
שקר
sh-q-r
falsehood; to speak or act falsely
The root names both a false claim and the act of dealing falsely. Here, the lie is speech with a stated destination: moving you away from your ground.
ALSO GROWS
sheqer: lie, falsehood
שֶׁקֶר
This is the noun in the verse: the message itself is false.
shāqar: to lie, act falsely
שָׁקַר
The verb form shows falsehood as an action, matching the verse’s picture of words used to displace you.
אַדְמַתְכֶם
admatkhem
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
the word-family of ground or soil and the human name Adam
The word rendered “land” is adamah: ground, soil. Its kinship with Adam holds human life and ground together; the lie’s target is the ground where you are rooted.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
This is the ground-word inside “your land,” making the threatened loss concrete and rooted.
adam: human, the ground-being
אָדָם
The shared word-family ties the human to the ground, so being pulled from the land reaches beyond a boundary to a relationship with one’s ground.
וַהֲדַחְתִּי
va-hadachti
GROWS FROM
נדח
n-d-ḥ
push away, drive out, scatter
“thrust you out” in this verse is va-hadachti. The verse uses a form of נדח for being driven out; the root also describes the state of someone left displaced. Its force makes the warning sharper than mere distance: it names expulsion.
ALSO GROWS
hiddiaḥ: to drive away, thrust out
הִדִּיחַ
This causative form shows someone being actively pushed away, as the verse says happens to you.
niddāḥ: one driven away, an outcast
נִדָּח
This form names the person left displaced, revealing the human cost carried by the verb.
THE PATTERN
False prophetic speech is exposed by the direction it carries people and the loss it produces.
Thus says the LORD of hosts, Do not hear and respond to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they make you vapor. They speak a sight of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.Thus says the LORD concerning the prophets who make my people wander, who bite with their teeth and cry out, Wholeness. And against whoever does not set something into their mouths, they set apart war.But there are also false prophets among the people, as there are false teachers among you, who slip in factions of perishing, denying the Master who bought them, and bringing swift perishing upon themselves.THE THREAD
If any of yours are driven away to the outermost edge of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will take you.The phrase “driven out” shares the root נדח (n-d-ḥ) with Jeremiah’s warning. Deuteronomy uses that same root for the one who is driven out, then says the LORD gathers and brings that person back; the root’s thread holds both displacement and return.
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