What Does Jeremiah 36:17 Mean?
And they asked Baruch, saying, Tell us now, How did you write all these words from his mouth?
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
And they asked Baruch, saying, Tell us now, How didst thou write all these words at his mouth?THE KEY
The page begins as speech: Baruch’s writing carries another speaker’s voice into durable form.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the seam between hearing and recording: a human hand can give lasting form to words that begin in another’s speech. The Hebrew מִפִּיו (mippiv, “from his mouth”) keeps the speaker present inside the written record.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that the hand holding the pen must be the voice that originated the words.
THE ROOT
דְּבָרִים
devarim
GROWS FROM
דבר
D-B-R
Speak; utter.
English “words” can sound like detached marks, but דָּבָר (davar, “word; matter”) joins what is spoken with the matter being spoken. Baruch’s writing carries the speaker’s words, and their substance, onto the page.
ALSO GROWS
davar: A word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
It links speech to what is said, so the written words remain connected to the speaker’s message.
dibber: He spoke or uttered.
דִּבֵּר
This verbal form makes the spoken source behind the written דְּבָרִים visible.
כָּתַבְתָּ
katavta
GROWS FROM
כתב
K-T-B
Write; inscribe.
“write” in this verse is katavta. The question focuses on the act that gives speech a visible, lasting form. Writing carries a voice forward through a scribe’s hand without making the scribe the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
ketav: Writing or written script.
כְּתָב
It names the visible form that speech takes on the page.
mikhtav: A letter or written message.
מִכְתָּב
It shows how inscription can carry a message beyond the moment and person who spoke it.
THE PATTERN
A spoken message can pass through a human hand into writing that carries it forward.
And the LORD said to Moses, Write this as a memorial in a scroll, and set it into the ears of Joshua. For I will surely wipe out the remembrance of Amalek from under the heavens.And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon the tablets, so that the one who calls it out may run.saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, and, write what you see in a scroll, and send it to the seven assemblies in Asia, to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.THE THREAD
Then Baruch answered them, He called out all these words to me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the book.The next verse makes the path explicit: one person pronounces the words, and Baruch writes them. Both verses use forms of כתב (K-T-B, “write”), revealing the hand that records and the voice that speaks as distinct parts of one transmission.
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