What Does Jeremiah 28:13 Mean?
Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus says the LORD. You have broken the yokes of wood, but you shall make for them yokes of iron.
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
Go and tell Hananiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Thou hast broken the yokes of wood; but thou shalt make for them yokes of iron.THE KEY
Breaking the visible yoke can leave the bondage intact, and make its next form iron.
THE MEANING
The verse shows that snapping a wooden yoke does not free the neck when a heavier yoke takes its place. A claim that bondage is over can become the occasion for a harder constraint. The wood breaks, and iron replaces it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that breaking the visible sign proves the burden has ended; here, a harsher yoke takes its place.
THE ROOT
מוֹטוֹת
motot
GROWS FROM
מוֹט
m-w-t
To totter, slip, or be shaken; מוֹטָה (motah) means a bar or yoke.
English gives only “yokes,” while the Hebrew word belongs to a root associated with slipping and being shaken. The image holds the bar of restraint alongside the loss of footing: breaking one bar does not steady the body if a harder one takes its place.
ALSO GROWS
lamot: To totter, slip, or be moved.
לָמוֹט
The root’s sense of unstable footing deepens the image of a yoke bearing down on the one beneath it.
motah: A bar, pole, or yoke.
מוֹטָה
This is the singular form behind the verse’s plural “yokes”; the wooden bar breaks, but an iron bar replaces it.
שָׁבַרְתָּ
shavarta
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break or shatter.
“broken” in this verse is shavarta. The breaking is real, but it does not mean the burden is gone. The verse places the act of breaking beside a new making: the wood is smashed, and iron yokes are made in its place.
ALSO GROWS
shever: A fracture, break, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
The root names both the breaking and the damage left by it, which keeps a broken sign from being mistaken for complete release.
mashber: A birth stool or a crisis of labor.
מַשְׁבֵּר
The word shows how breaking can mark a painful threshold; in this verse, the break in the wooden yoke gives way to a harsher constraint.
חֲנַנְיָה
Chananyah
GROWS FROM
חנן
ḥ-n-n
To show favor or be gracious; the name means “Yah has shown favor.”
“Hananiah” in this verse is Chananyah. The name carries favor within it, while the verse sets it beside an iron yoke. That tension makes the name more than a label: the promise of favor stands against a burden that hardens.
ALSO GROWS
chen: Favor.
חֵן
Favor is the quality compressed into the name, adding resonance to the contrast with the iron yoke.
ḥannun: Gracious, showing favor.
חַנּוּן
This form names the quality expressed by the root and clarifies the favor carried in Hananiah’s name.
THE PATTERN
A promise of release that leaves the underlying bond untouched can reproduce bondage in a harsher form.
They heal the breaking of the daughter of my people with a light hand, saying, Wholeness, wholeness, when there is no wholeness.They promise freedom, while they themselves are servants of decay, for by whomever a person is overcome, to that one he is enslaved.Stand, then, in the freedom for which the Anointed One set us free, and do not be caught again in the yoke of slavery.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD to me, Make for yourself bonds and yokes, and put them on your neck.The same Hebrew word for “yokes,” מוֹטוֹת (motot), appears in both verses, linking the yoke placed on the neck with the iron replacement. Together they show that changing or breaking the visible bar does not, by itself, bring release.
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