What Does Jeremiah 32:32 Mean?
Because of all the evil of the children of Israel and the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger, they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the ones who settle in Jerusalem.
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
Because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger, they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.THE KEY
The wrongdoing is not assigned to one corrupt office: kings, priests, prophets, and residents all stand inside the same indictment.
THE MEANING
The verse places rulers, officials, priests, prophets, and residents inside one shared indictment. Their conduct causes anger; the Hebrew verb ties that anger directly to what they do. Jerusalem, whose name carries the resonance of wholeness, appears here amid communal fracture.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The harm comes from one corrupt leader while the rest of the community remains uninvolved.
THE ROOT
לְהַכְעִיסֵנִי
lehaḵʿīsēnî
GROWS FROM
כעס
k-ʿ-s
To be vexed or angry; in the Hiphil, to cause anger or provoke.
English can make “provoke me to anger” sound like anger is an added reaction. Hebrew uses the causative form of כעס, binding the anger to the deeds named in the verse and placing responsibility across its list of actors.
ALSO GROWS
kaʿas: Anger, vexation.
כַּעַס
This noun names the state carried by the same root as the verse’s causative verb.
lehaḵʿīs: To cause anger, provoke.
לְהַכְעִיס
This is the causative infinitive in the verse: the actors’ deeds cause the anger described.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be whole or complete; שָׁלוֹם (shalom) means wholeness. Yerushalayim carries this wholeness doubled in its -ayim ending.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The city name carries the doubled wholeness of shalom, yet the verse places it beside a community-wide indictment. English preserves the place name but leaves this tension between wholeness and communal fracture unheard.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
Its resonance in Yerushalayim sharpens the contrast with the wrongdoing named here.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This form from the same root makes the name’s association with completeness audible.
THE PATTERN
When wrongdoing becomes a shared system, scripture names leaders, religious offices, and ordinary people as participants.
For from the small of them even to the great of them, every one cuts for gain; and from the prophet even to the priest, every one works a lie.Its heads judge for a bribe, and its priests teach for a price, and its prophets divine for silver. Yet they lean their full weight upon the LORD and say, Is not the LORD in our midst? No harm can come upon us.For all the nations have drunk from the wine of the seething of her selling herself, and the kings of the earth have sold themselves with her, and the traders of the earth have grown rich from the abundance of her feasts.THE THREAD
The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough to make cakes for the queen of the heavens, and pour out drink offerings to other gods, so that they may provoke me.The same causative root כעס appears as children, fathers, and women take part in the actions that provoke anger. Beside Jeremiah 32:32’s list of public and religious offices, this verse shows the indictment extending through household life too.
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