What Does Jeremiah 33:19 Mean?
And the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying,
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 word of the LORD came unto Jeremiah, saying,THE KEY
The Hebrew word translated “word” can also mean “matter” or “thing,” so the LORD’s speech arrives with the weight of something real.
THE MEANING
The verse places you before a word that arrives and speaks, rather than an idea you have to manufacture. Hebrew dāḇār (דָּבָר, “word” or “matter”) lets that address carry the sense of an event with substance in your life now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that divine speech is only an inward idea without reality: the verse presents it as an address that arrives and takes place.
THE ROOT
דְּבַר
devar
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
The root carries the sense of speaking; the noun can name both a spoken word and a matter or thing.
Hebrew dāḇār can mean a spoken word and a matter or thing, so “word” has more than the feel of information. Here, speech is an event addressed to Jeremiah, and the noun lets the matter itself be heard within the word.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: to speak
דִּבֵּר
This verb makes the spoken dimension of dāḇār audible: the word in this verse is speech addressed to someone.
dĕvārîm: words, matters, or things
דְּבָרִים
The plural preserves the word-and-matter range, opening the possibility that what is spoken is also something taking place.
וַיְהִי
wayhi
GROWS FROM
ה־י־ה
h-y-h
To be, become, or happen.
The form behind “came” is wayhi, from hāyâ, a root whose range includes being, becoming, and happening. Alongside the English image of arrival, the Hebrew form lets the address register as an event taking place for Jeremiah.
ALSO GROWS
hāyâ: to be, become, or happen
הָיָה
This basic form shows the event-like sense carried by the verb in the verse.
yihyeh: will be or will happen
יִהְיֶה
This related form keeps the root’s sense of becoming or taking place in view.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s word arrives as an event of address, meeting a person where they are.
Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying,The word of the LORD came, indeed came, to Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, in the land of the Chaldeans by the river Chebar, and the hand of the LORD was there upon him.While Annas and Caiaphas were the chief priests, the word of God came upon John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.THE THREAD
By the word of the LORD the heavens are made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.Psalm 33:6 uses the same Hebrew root, dāḇār (דָּבָר, “word” or “matter”), and links the LORD’s word with the making of the heavens. Here, that word reaches a person and speaks: the same speech that bears on creation arrives as address.
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