What Does Jeremiah 32:29 Mean?
And the Chaldeans who fight against this city will come and set fire to this city, and burn it with the houses upon whose roofs they have made smoke rise to Baal, and have poured out drink offerings to other gods, to provoke me to anger.
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
And the Chaldeans, that fight against this city, shall come and set fire on this city, and burn it with the houses, upon whose roofs they have offered incense unto Baal, and poured out drink offerings unto other gods, to provoke me to anger.THE KEY
The root behind the poured libation also names a cast-metal image, joining the offering on the roof to the rival power it serves.
THE MEANING
The verse places worship and destruction in one exposed scene: incense rises to Baal, drink offerings are poured to other gods, and the houses burn. It names those offerings as a provocation to God, showing the allegiance enacted on the rooftops as part of the city’s reckoning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that an offering to another god is a harmless gesture with no claim on the place and people who make it.
THE ROOT
הִסִּכוּ
hissikhu
GROWS FROM
נסך
To pour out; also to pour or cast molten metal.
“poured out” in this verse is hissikhu. The root keeps the libation concrete: something is poured toward a god. Jeremiah 10:14 uses the same root family for a cast image, linking the poured offering with the fashioned power it serves.
ALSO GROWS
nesekh: Libation; drink offering.
נֶסֶךְ
This is the offering poured toward other gods in the verse, making allegiance a material act.
massekhah: Cast-metal image; molten image.
מַסֵּכָה
Jeremiah 10:14 uses this related word for a fashioned rival power, extending the root’s image of pouring from offering to idol.
בַּעַל
baʿal
GROWS FROM
בעל
To own or master; the noun can mean owner, master, or husband.
Baal is a title as well as a name: the Hebrew carries the sense of master or owner. The verse’s name therefore says whom the rooftop offering recognizes as master.
ALSO GROWS
baʿal: Master, owner; also the title or name Baal.
בַּעַל
The verse names the recipient of the incense with a word that also means master.
beʿalim: Owners, masters, or husbands; also Baals.
בְּעָלִים
The plural carries the same language of mastery into the verse’s reference to other gods.
הַכְעִסֵנִי
hakʿiseni
GROWS FROM
כעס
To vex, provoke, or anger.
“provoke me to anger” in this verse is hakʿiseni. The Hebrew does not leave these offerings as a neutral preference: it says they provoke or vex God. That stated provocation sits in the same sentence as the burning, keeping the verse’s violence and its named cause together.
ALSO GROWS
kaʿas: Anger, vexation, or distress.
כַּעַס
This noun names the state the verse says the offerings provoke.
makhʿis: One who provokes or vexes.
מַכְעִיס
This related form emphasizes the act of causing the anger named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Scripture describes worship directed toward rival gods as a provocation of the LORD.
They set him burning with the gods of strangers; with what makes the body recoil, they provoked him.They vexed him with their heights, and stirred him to jealousy with their carved images.Or do we stir the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?THE THREAD
Every man is brutish by his knowledge; every refiner is shamed by the carved image, for his poured image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them.The libation verb here comes from נסך (nāsakh), the same root that forms מַסֵּכָה (massekhah), “molten image.” Jeremiah 10:14 calls that image false and says there is no breath in it, joining the poured offering here to the fashioned power it serves.
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