What Does Jeremiah 33:23 Mean?
Then 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
Moreover the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying,THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “word” can also mean “matter,” so the LORD’s speech arrives as something happening, not only something being said.
THE MEANING
You meet the LORD’s word as living address: it arrives and speaks. The Hebrew verb rendered “came” carries the sense of “was” or “happened,” holding arrival and occurrence together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that divine speech is only distant information with no present address.
THE ROOT
דְּבַר־
devar
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; as a noun, a word, matter, thing, or affair.
Davar can name both speech and a matter or affair, so “word” carries more than an abstract message. Here it arrives and is immediately followed by “saying”: speech enters the scene as an event that voices itself.
ALSO GROWS
dābār: Word; matter, thing, or affair.
דָּבָר
The same Hebrew noun can name speech and a matter, letting the line hold both what is said and what is taking place.
dibber: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The verbal form shows the root in action; the verse moves from the arriving word into speech.
וַיְהִי
vayehi
GROWS FROM
היה
To be, become, or happen.
The form vayehi can mean “and it was” or “and it happened,” giving “came” a shade of becoming present. The word is not described only as traveling toward a hearer; it occurs as address.
ALSO GROWS
vayehi: And it was; and it happened.
וַיְהִי
This is the form used in the verse, joining the word’s arrival with its occurrence.
ehyeh: I am; I will be.
אֶהְיֶה
This form from the same root links being with what comes into presence, echoing the verse’s sense of the word becoming present.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s word is living address: it reaches a hearer as an event and speaks into the 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.While Annas and Caiaphas were the chief priests, the word of God came upon John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.It is the breath that gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are breath, and they are life.THE THREAD
By the word of the LORD the heavens are made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth.The Hebrew word translated “word” here is the same davar that opens Jeremiah’s verse; it can name both speech and a matter. Psalm 33:6 shows that this word is active in the making of reality, while Jeremiah’s line shows it arriving as address.
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