What Does Jeremiah 32:1 Mean?
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar.
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
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the tenth year of Zedekiah king of Judah, which was the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar.THE KEY
The Hebrew word translated “word” can also mean “matter” or “thing,” so what arrives as speech is bound to the reality around it.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s word meets Jeremiah within a sharply bounded span named alongside two rulers. The verse speaks now by holding word and circumstance together: the reader’s real conditions are not outside the reach of divine address.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The word of the LORD is remote from the concrete pressures and particulars of a real moment.
THE ROOT
הַדָּבָר
ha-davar
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak; as a noun, a word, matter, or thing.
Davar holds speech and matter together: the word is not only something said, but something present in the situation. Here, that word is placed beside an exact span of time and the names of rulers.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The speaking verb shares the seed of the noun: the word is an act of address, not merely a label for information.
devarim: Words, matters, or things.
דְּבָרִים
This plural preserves the word’s range from spoken words to matters themselves, echoing how the verse binds divine speech to concrete circumstance.
צִדְקִיָּהוּ
tsidqiyahu
GROWS FROM
צ־ד־ק
ts-d-q
To be right or aligned; the root also carries the sense of justice.
“Zedekiah” in this verse is tsidqiyahu. Tsidqiyahu’s name carries the sense “YHWH is righteousness,” with the root of alignment inside it. That name and the word from the LORD stand side by side in the same sharply bounded moment.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Alignment or justice.
צֶדֶק
This root gives the king’s name its language of alignment.
tsedaqah: Justice or right action.
צְדָקָה
This branch extends the root from alignment into its expression in action.
THE PATTERN
The word of the LORD enters a named human moment, where speech is also matter made present.
After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not fear, Abram. I am your shield, and your very great wages.Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.THE THREAD
Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,Both verses use davar for “word,” a Hebrew word that also carries the sense of “matter.” Jeremiah 1:4 shows this arrival opening a living address; Jeremiah 32:1 pins that arrival to an exact, named moment.
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