What Does Jeremiah 32:30 Mean?
For the children of Israel and the children of Judah have done only evil before me from their youth. For the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, 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 the children of Israel and the children of Judah have only done evil before me from their youth: for the children of Israel have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands, saith the LORD.THE KEY
Hebrew uses one root for the act of provoking and the anger it stirs, tying the people’s deeds directly to the response.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses you with a hard truth: evil can become a pattern carried from early life and made visible in what your hands produce. Those actions stir the LORD’s anger, and the repeated “only” leaves no soft edge in the charge.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that the LORD’s anger is detached from human action: here, it is stirred by the continuing work of people’s hands.
THE ROOT
מַכְעִיסִים אֹתִי
makhʿisim oti
GROWS FROM
כעס
k-ʿ-s
To be angry or vexed; in a causative form, to anger or provoke.
“provoked me to anger” in this verse is makhʿisim oti. The Hebrew verb means that the people are making the speaker angry; “provoke” and “anger” are joined in one word-family. That makes the response part of the verse’s description of what their actions do.
ALSO GROWS
kaʿas: Anger or vexation; also, to be angry or vexed.
כַּעַס
It names the anger within the same root-family as the action that stirs it.
makhʿis: One who angers or provokes, in a causative form.
מַכְעִיס
Jeremiah uses its plural form for the people’s ongoing act of stirring anger.
מַעֲשֶׂה
maʿaseh
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿ-s-h
To do or make.
The verse does not leave evil as an abstract label: it calls it the work of their hands. Hebrew keeps doing and deed in one word-family, making the actions themselves visible in the charge.
ALSO GROWS
ʿasah: To do or make.
עָשָׂה
This is the action at the root of the “work” named in the verse.
maʿaseh: Work, deed, or action.
מַעֲשֶׂה
This is the noun in “the work of their hands,” giving the actions a tangible form.
הֵרַע
hēraʿ
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To be bad or evil; to do evil.
“done evil” in this verse is hēraʿ. The verse uses the same root-family for evil and for doing evil, joining the quality with the act. Its repeated “only” describes that act as a persistent pattern rather than a passing moment.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Evil or bad.
רַע
It names the quality expressed in the act described by the verse.
hēraʿ: Did evil; acted badly.
הֵרַע
This is the verb form used for what the people do.
THE PATTERN
What a person repeatedly does becomes visible in their actions and the fruit they produce.
And the LORD saw that the harm of humankind was great in the earth, and that every shaping of the thoughts of his heart was only harm all the day.Even a child is known by his deeds, whether his work is clean, and whether it runs straight.So every good tree makes good fruit, but the rotten tree makes evil fruit.THE THREAD
Thus they vexed him with their deeds, and the striking burst out upon them.The Hebrew verb translated “provoked him to anger” comes from the same כעס root as Jeremiah’s “provoked me to anger.” Psalm 106:29 echoes the link between actions and anger, while Jeremiah makes the hands’ work explicit.
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