What Does Jeremiah 29:9 Mean?
For they prophesy falsely to you in my nature. I have not sent them, says the LORD.
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 falsely unto you in my name: I have not sent them, saith the LORD.THE KEY
The LORD’s name can be claimed, but his sending is what gives a voice its true source.
THE MEANING
A voice can claim to speak in the LORD’s nature without having been sent by him. The verse speaks now wherever a sacred claim and its source come apart.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that invoking the LORD’s name by itself proves that a message comes from him.
THE ROOT
שְׁלַחְתִּים
shelachtim
GROWS FROM
שׁלח
shalach
send, send forth, release
“sent” in this verse is shelachtim. The root holds sending and release together: to send is to let something go forth from its source. The speakers claim the LORD’s name, but the verse says no sending from that source stands behind them.
ALSO GROWS
shilleach: send away, release, let go
שִׁלֵּחַ
This form makes the releasing sense of the root audible: the verse turns on whether these voices have actually been sent forth.
Shiloach: Shiloach, the name of a waterway; its name is rendered “Sent” in John 9:7
שִׁלֹחַ
At the pool of Siloam, a man receives sight; the sent waters connect this root’s movement with restoration.
THE PATTERN
A voice’s claimed authority is distinguished from its source by whether it has truly been sent.
But the prophet, who boils over to speak a word in my nature, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the nature of other gods, that one dies.I have come in my Father's nature, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own nature, him you will receive.Paul, a sent one, not from humans, nor through a human, but through Jesus, the Anointed One, and through God the Father, who raised him from the dead.THE THREAD
Now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.The same root names a sending that brings people out from Egypt, the place of constriction: the LORD’s sending carries release. Jeremiah’s speakers invoke the LORD’s nature, but the verse says no sending from that source stands behind their words.
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