What Does Jeremiah 36:13 Mean?
Then Michaiah told them all the words that he had heard, when Baruch called out from the book in the ears of the people.
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
Then Michaiah declared unto them all the words that he had heard, when Baruch read the book in the ears of the people.THE KEY
A word does not end at the first hearing: it becomes testimony as it passes from voice to voice.
THE MEANING
You meet the word as something carried: what enters one person’s hearing can pass through another and become testimony before those with power. Michaiah’s name, מִיכָיְהוּ (Mikayahu, “Who is like YHWH?”), holds a question in the name of the one who carries the report.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that hearing is private and ends when the sound reaches you; here, hearing can become a report that enters public life.
THE ROOT
שָׁמַע
shamaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen.
The same root can name both hearing and a report or tidings, the thing heard. English separates receiving a message from carrying it onward, while the Hebrew word links them in one chain.
ALSO GROWS
shemuʿah: Report, news, tidings.
שְׁמוּעָה
A report is what has been heard and can now be carried to others.
shemaʿ: Hear, listen; in a command, hear and respond.
שְׁמַע
The verse’s heard word is already moving toward another response through Michaiah’s retelling.
בִּקְרֹא
biqroʾ
GROWS FROM
קרא
q-r-ʾ
Call out, proclaim, read aloud.
“called out” in this verse is biqroʾ. The verb for reading also carries the sense of calling something out. Baruch’s reading is voiced into the people’s ears, making the book’s words publicly heard.
ALSO GROWS
qaraʾ: Call, proclaim, read aloud.
קָרָא
The same verb can describe both reading a text and calling its words into the open.
miqraʾ: Convocation, public reading.
מִקְרָא
This branch joins spoken reading with a gathered audience, echoing the people listening together.
וַיַּגֵּד
wayyagged
GROWS FROM
נגד
n-g-d
Make known, tell, declare.
“declared” in this verse is wayyagged. The verse uses a telling-word for Michaiah’s report: what he received by hearing is set before others as something known. The movement is from spoken words, to hearing, to making them known again.
ALSO GROWS
maggid: One who tells or reports.
מַגִּיד
The teller is a carrier of words, like Michaiah in this verse.
haggadah: Telling, narration.
הַגָּדָה
A narration gives form to what has been received and passes it onward.
THE PATTERN
A word becomes shared witness as it is read, heard, and carried onward in speech.
When all Israel comes to see the face of the LORD your God in the place he will choose, you will call out this instruction before all Israel, in their ears.And he called aloud from it before the wide place that was before the gate of the waters, from first light until the middle of the day, facing the men and the women, and those who could tell the difference, and the ears of all the people were turned toward the book of the instruction.For we cannot keep from speaking what we have perceived and heard.THE THREAD
Now it came to be, when they had heard all the words, that they were afraid, each man toward his neighbor, and said to Baruch, We will surely tell the king of all these words.The same root שמע (shamaʿ, “hear”) appears again in “heard,” so the listening continues into another report. The words Michaiah carries are heard again, then carried toward the king: the message moves through witnesses instead of stopping with its first speaker.
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