What Does Jeremiah 37:17 Mean?
Then Zedekiah the king sent and took him out, and the king asked him in the hidden place of his house, and said, Is there any word from the LORD? And Jeremiah said, There is, for you shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon.
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 Zedekiah the king sent, and took him out: and the king asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any word from the LORD? And Jeremiah said, There is: for, said he, thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.THE KEY
The word from the LORD answers the king’s private question with an unsettlingly concrete matter: he will be given into another king’s hand.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks in the gap between asking for an answer and hearing one: a word may name exposure rather than rescue. Here the answer is exact and concrete, Zedekiah is to be given into Babylon’s king’s hand, and secrecy does not make the message gentler.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a word from the LORD must confirm the asker’s preferred outcome or arrive as comfort.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
Speak, declare; in its noun form, word or matter.
The Hebrew דָּבָר (davar) can mean “word,” “matter,” or “affair.” The king asks for a word, and Jeremiah’s answer makes that word inseparable from the concrete matter it names: being placed in Babylon’s king’s hand.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke; spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The speaking form shows that this word has a voice behind it: Jeremiah answers with a spoken declaration.
devarim: Words; matters or affairs.
דְּבָרִים
The same root can name words and matters, joining what is said to what is at stake.
תִּנָּתֵן
tinnaten
GROWS FROM
נתן
Give, set, place.
The Hebrew תִּנָּתֵן (tinnaten) means “you will be given,” from נָתַן (natan), “give, set, place.” The passive form makes the transfer plain: Zedekiah will be placed in the hand of Babylon’s king.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This is the root verb beneath “delivered”; the verse’s surrounding words show where the giving places him.
mattanah: Gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This word from the same root names something given; here the context makes clear that the transfer is forced, not benevolent.
THE PATTERN
A word from God is not detached information: it names the matter at stake and acts upon what it reveals.
And the LORD said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a deed in Israel, at which both ears of everyone who hears it will ring.So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.For the word of God is living and working, and sharper than any two-edged sword, reaching through even to the dividing of living soul and breath, of joints and marrow, and it separates the inward movements and thoughts of the heart.THE THREAD
And afterward, says the LORD, I will give Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and those left behind in this city from the plague, from the sword, and from the hunger, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, into their enemies' hand, and into the hand of those who seek their living soul. He shall strike them with the mouth of the sword. He shall not spare them, nor pity them, nor have compassion.Jeremiah 21:7 uses the same נתן (natan, “give, set, place”) root for what the KJV renders “deliver” into the king’s hand. The shared root makes the transfer concrete, while the surrounding words preserve the violence of its outcome.
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