What Does Jeremiah 34:16 Mean?
But you turned back and pierced my name, and caused each man's servant and each man's maidservant, whom you had sent free as their own living souls desired, to return; and you brought them under, to be your servants and your maidservants.
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
But ye turned and polluted my name, and caused every man his servant, and every man his handmaid, whom ye had set at liberty at their pleasure, to return, and brought them into subjection, to be unto you for servants and for handmaids.THE KEY
They profane God’s name by reversing the very release that was supposed to embody it.
THE MEANING
The charge lands now: you set people free, then take them back and place them under your service again. “My name,” שְׁמִי (shemi, “my name”), carries the nature represented by the name; this reversal makes the release and that nature contradict each other. The verse names the undoing of another person’s freedom as a profaning of God’s name.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A release can be revoked without contradicting the character represented by the name invoked in granting it.
THE ROOT
שִׁלַּחְתֶּם
shillachtem
GROWS FROM
שלח
Send out, send forth, release, let go.
“sent free” in this verse is shillachtem. The release is an act of sending people out from under their masters’ control. The verse then turns that sending around and brings them back into service, exposing how a release can be made and then undone.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send forth, release, let go.
שָׁלַח
This root names the act by which the people are first set free.
shaliach: Messenger or envoy; one who is sent.
שְׁלִיחַ
A messenger carries the sender’s intention outward; here, sending people out means releasing them from another’s control.
shilluach: Sending away or dismissal.
שִׁלּוּחַ
This branch makes the release concrete: the people are sent away free, not merely promised freedom.
חִלַּלְתֶּם
chilleltem
GROWS FROM
חלל
Profane or treat as common.
“pierced my name” in this verse is chilleltem. The text calls the reversal a profaning of God’s name: the name is שְׁמִי (shemi, “my name”), carrying the nature represented by it. By making the release revocable, the people treat that nature as common and contradict it in their actions.
ALSO GROWS
chillel: Profane or treat as common.
חִלֵּל
This is the verb behind “polluted”; it names the way the reversal dishonors the name.
chol: Common or unconsecrated.
חֹל
The shared root connects profaning with treating something as ordinary, though the verse names the deed rather than an abstract status.
עֲבָדִים
avadim
GROWS FROM
עבד
Serve or work; be in service.
The released people are returned to the role of servants, and the sentence assigns them back to service under the same root. It shows the reversal in full: the people who were sent out are made into labor for their former masters again.
ALSO GROWS
eved: Servant or worker.
עֶבֶד
This is the personhood imposed on those who were released and then brought back into subjection.
avodah: Service, labor, or work.
עֲבֹדָה
The related word names the work and subordination to which the former servants are returned.
THE PATTERN
A release is undone when the people set free are pulled back under the mastery they left.
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.And when you send him out unbound from you, you shall not send him away empty.Stand, then, in the freedom for which the Anointed One set us free, and do not be caught again in the yoke of slavery.THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told the Great House, Thus says the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may dance a feast to me in the wilderness.Jeremiah uses the root שׁלח (shalach, “send forth, release”) for those the masters had set free. Exodus speaks the release as a command; Jeremiah shows what it means to reverse that sending and return the people to service.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us