What Does Jeremiah 34:10 Mean?
Now when all the princes and all the people who had entered into the covenant heard that each should send free his male servant and his female servant, and that they should no longer keep them serving, then they heard and responded, and they sent them.
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
Now when all the princes, and all the people, which had entered into the covenant, heard that every one should let his manservant, and every one his maidservant, go free, that none should serve themselves of them any more, then they obeyed, and let them go.THE KEY
The Hebrew uses the same word for “heard” and “obeyed”: here, hearing becomes release.
THE MEANING
The covenant takes shape as people release those bound to their service and stop using their labor. For the reader now, hearing a just claim is joined to the act that makes it real; inward agreement alone does not complete it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a covenant can be honored by agreeing with its words while keeping another person’s labor.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁמְעוּ
wayyišmeʿû
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen, receive what is said.
“heard and responded” in this verse is wayyišmeʿû. The Hebrew repeats the same verb where the KJV first says “heard” and then “obeyed.” That repetition shows hearing completed in action: the people hear the demand for release, then carry it out.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
This imperative carries hearing toward a response, echoing the verse’s movement from hearing the covenant’s terms to acting on them.
shomea: One who hears or listens.
שֹׁמֵעַ
This form presents hearing as active reception, which the verse shows becoming visible in the release.
וַיְשַׁלֵּחוּם
wayšalleḥûm
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send out, send away, release.
“sent them” in this verse is wayšalleḥûm. The verse uses this root both for the covenant’s required release and for the people’s act of letting the servants go. The root’s sense of sending outward gives release a concrete shape: those held in service are sent beyond the claim over them.
ALSO GROWS
Shiloach: Shiloah, the sent waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name carries the image of something sent forth, echoing the servants being released from another’s control.
shulchan: Table; provision extended outward.
שֻׁלְחָן
This branch carries the root’s outward movement into provision, adding the sense of an open hand to the release enacted here.
THE PATTERN
A covenant’s words take shape when hearing becomes a concrete release of another person.
And if your brother, a Hebrew man or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you and serves you six years, then in the seventh year you shall send him out from you unbound.And he took the scroll of the covenant, and called it out in the ears of the people, and they said, All that the LORD has said we will do, and we will hear and respond.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
Is this not the fast I have chosen, to open the bonds of wickedness, to untie the cords of the yoke, to send the crushed away free, and to tear away every yoke?“Let the oppressed go free” uses the same shalach root as Jeremiah’s “let them go.” Isaiah opens the release beyond these servants to the breaking of every yoke.
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