What Does Jeremiah 38:9 Mean?
My lord the king, these men have done harm in all they did to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they threw into the pit, and he will die by hunger where he is, for there is no more bread in the city.
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
My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon; and he is like to die for hunger in the place where he is: for there is no more bread in the city.THE KEY
The pit turns hidden power into a bodily crisis: the man cast away is near death while the whole city has no bread.
THE MEANING
The verse names evil by its bodily consequence: a person is cast into a pit and brought near death by hunger while the city has no bread. Confinement and public scarcity meet in one vulnerable body; the danger is concrete, not abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that harm stays harmless when its victim disappears from view; the pit, hunger, and empty city make the cost bodily and near.
THE ROOT
הִשְׁלִיכוּ
hishlikhu
GROWS FROM
שׁלך
to throw, cast, or fling
“threw into the pit” in this verse is hishlikhu. The verb pictures a person flung into a pit, at the mercy of what lies below. The same root can describe casting a burden onto support, so here its starkness is in a person being thrown where help is absent.
ALSO GROWS
hishlikhu: they cast or threw
הִשְׁלִיכוּ
This is the form used for the men throwing Jeremiah into the pit.
hashlekh: cast or throw; an imperative form
הַשְׁלֵךְ
Psalm 55:22 uses this form to cast a burden onto the LORD, showing how the root’s force depends on what is thrown and where it lands.
בָּרָעָב
ba-ra'av
GROWS FROM
רעב
to be hungry; hunger or famine
“by hunger” in this verse is ba-ra'av. This root can name hunger in one body and famine across a community. The verse holds those scales together: Jeremiah’s bodily danger unfolds as the city’s supply is exhausted.
ALSO GROWS
ra'av: hunger or famine
רָעָב
This is the noun in the verse, naming the condition that brings Jeremiah near death.
ra'ev: hungry; a person who is hungry
רָעֵב
This form names the hungry person, bringing the same root from the broad condition of famine down to the body experiencing it.
THE PATTERN
Care becomes concrete where freedom, food, and bodily need are at stake.
Is it not to break your bread for the hungry, and to bring the wandering poor into your house? When you see the naked, cover him, and do not hide yourself from your own flesh.Who makes judgment for the pressed, who gives bread to the hungry. The LORD loosens the bound.And one of you says to them, Go in wholeness, be warmed and filled, but you do not give them what the body needs. What is the profit?THE THREAD
Then Zedekiah the king said that they should set Jeremiah in the court of the guard, and that they should give him day by day a round loaf of bread from the wide street of the bakers, until all the bread of the city was used up. Thus Jeremiah settled in the court of the guard.The word לֶחֶם (lechem, bread or food) appears in both verses. Here, Jeremiah 37:21 shows his daily portion lasting only while the city’s bread lasts; the current verse names the moment that supply is gone and his life is at risk.
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