What Does Jeremiah 3:24 Mean?
And shame has eaten the toil of our fathers from our youth, their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.
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 shame hath devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth; their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.THE KEY
Here shame is pictured as a mouth consuming a people’s labor, provision, and children.
THE MEANING
The verse names shame as a devourer: it consumes work built across years, along with provision and children. Its reach moves from what sustains a household to the life continuing through it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that shame is only a private feeling, with no cost beyond the one who feels it.
THE ROOT
אָכְלָה
ʾākhəlāh
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾākal: to eat, consume.
“has eaten” in this verse is ʾākhəlāh. The root for eating makes shame an eater, with labor, herds, sons, and daughters as what it consumes. The loss reaches both the yield of years and the life carried forward by a family.
ALSO GROWS
maʾakhal: food; something eaten
מַאֲכָל
This branch names what is consumed, making the verse’s list of losses the devourer’s food.
ʾakhilah: eating; consumption
אֲכִילָה
This branch names the act itself, keeping the image focused on consumption rather than an abstract misfortune.
יְגִיעַ
yegîaʿ
GROWS FROM
יגע
yāgaʿ: to exert oneself, toil, or grow weary.
“toil” in this verse is yegîaʿ. This root holds the exertion of labor and the weariness it brings; יְגִיעַ can also name the product of that labor. The devouring therefore reaches both the effort spent and what that effort has yielded.
ALSO GROWS
yāgaʿ: to toil; to grow weary
יָגַע
The verb makes the human exertion behind the lost livelihood audible.
yegîʿāh: toil; labor
יְגִיעָה
This noun shares the root and reinforces that what is consumed has been produced through sustained effort.
yāgēaʿ: weary; exhausted
יָגֵעַ
This form shows the cost of the labor in the people themselves, not only in what they possess.
THE PATTERN
A devouring force is known by what it consumes: livelihood, provision, or the vulnerable.
For they covered the eye of the whole land, so that it went dark. They ate all the grass of the land and all the fruit of the trees that the hail had left, and no green remained in the trees, or in the grass of the field, through all the land of Egypt.Do all the workers of crookedness not perceive? They eat my people as they eat bread; they do not call out to the LORD.Woe to you, writers and separated ones, masked ones! For you devour the houses of widows, and for show you lengthen your prayers. Therefore you will receive a greater separating.THE THREAD
Do all the workers of crookedness not perceive? They eat my people as they eat bread; they do not call out to the LORD.Both verses use the Hebrew root אכל (ʾākal), “eat, consume,” to show harm as devouring. Psalm 14:4 pictures people being eaten like bread; here shame consumes a people’s labor and the life of their families.
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