What Does Jeremiah 35:1 Mean?
The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD in the days of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah, 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
The word which came unto Jeremiah from the LORD in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, saying,THE KEY
The Hebrew presents the LORD’s word as something that happens in Jeremiah’s time, not merely as information that arrives.
THE MEANING
A word from the LORD reaches a person inside a named moment, amid the relationships and structures already shaping that life. Here Jeremiah receives it within a king’s reign, and the opening “saying” presents it as speech with something to disclose.
THE ROOT
וַיְהִי
wayehi
GROWS FROM
היה
To be, become, or happen.
The Hebrew opens, literally, “And it happened: the word of the LORD to Jeremiah,” where the KJV renders the sense as “the word which came.” The word reaches him as an event within time, not only as a sentence delivered to him.
ALSO GROWS
hayah: Was, became, or happened.
הָיָה
This is the basic verb behind wayehi; it frames the word as something that takes place.
yihyeh: Will be or will happen.
יִהְיֶה
This form carries the same root into what is yet to come, linking being and happening across time.
דְבַר־
devar
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
To speak; speech, word, or matter.
Davar can mean both “word” and “matter,” joining what is spoken with what the speech concerns. The LORD’s word here is directed speech that bears a matter, rather than sound without substance.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The verb shares the root and shows the word as speech reaching Jeremiah.
devarim: Words or matters.
דְּבָרִים
This plural branch keeps speech and matter together, broadening what “the word” can hold.
THE PATTERN
Divine speech arrives as a situated event addressed to a particular person.
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.And a voice came to him, Rise, Peter; slaughter, and eat.THE THREAD
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.Ezekiel’s Hebrew echoes Jeremiah’s construction: wayehi devar YHWH, “and the word of the LORD happened” to him. The shared roots make the arrival itself part of the encounter: the word becomes present to a named person in a particular place.
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