What Does Jeremiah 36:28 Mean?
Take again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim king of Judah has burned.
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
Take thee again another roll, and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll, which Jehoiakim the king of Judah hath burned.THE KEY
A hand can burn the page without burning the word it carries.
THE MEANING
A destroyed record does not erase what it carries. What is burned from the page can be written again; its life is not bound to its first vessel. This verse speaks now wherever destruction is mistaken for the end of what is true.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that destroying the record can erase the words it carried.
THE ROOT
דְּבָרִים
devarim
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; a word, matter, or thing.
The words on the scroll belong to the same root as speech and matter. English can make them seem like marks trapped on a page, but the Hebrew keeps the written words connected to what is spoken and what is real.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: spoke; to speak
דִּבֵּר
The words that are written can also be spoken; burning their page does not silence the utterance.
davar: word, matter, or thing
דָּבָר
The root joins a word to the matter it carries, so destroying the written witness does not make that matter vanish.
THE PATTERN
Destroying the written witness does not extinguish the word it carries.
The grass dries, the flower withers, but the word of our God stands for the ages.Heaven and earth pass by, but my words do not pass by.In this I bear ill, even unto bonds, as one who works ill; but the word of God is not bound.THE THREAD
And the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, after the king had burned the roll and the words that Baruch wrote from the mouth of Jeremiah, saying,Jeremiah 36:27 says the word of the LORD (דְּבַר־יְהוָה, devar-YHWH: the LORD’s word or matter) comes after the roll is burned. The same root underlies “words” here: the written record can be destroyed while the word still arrives.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us