What Does Jeremiah 40:2 Mean?
And the chief of the slaughterers took Jeremiah and said to him, The LORD your God has spoken this evil upon this place.
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 the captain of the guard took Jeremiah, and said unto him, The LORD thy God hath pronounced this evil upon this place.THE KEY
The “evil” pronounced here is calamity itself: divine judgment appears not as an idea, but as a place’s ruin.
THE MEANING
Here, ruin is named without disguise: the place stands under calamity pronounced by the LORD, and even the captain carrying Jeremiah recognizes the source. The verse speaks now wherever judgment is no longer an idea but a devastation that can be seen and named.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the assumption that the verse calls God morally wicked: “evil” here also carries the concrete sense of harm and calamity.
THE ROOT
הָרָעָה
hā-rāʿāh
GROWS FROM
רָעַע
rāʿaʿ
To be bad, act harmfully, or spoil.
The רָעָה (raʿah, “evil/disaster”) word-family can name moral wrong, harm, or calamity. Here it names the disaster pronounced upon the place, keeping the judgment stark and concrete.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, harmful, or evil.
רַע
This adjective shows how the root can describe what is harmful or wrong.
raʿah: Evil, harm, trouble, or calamity.
רָעָה
This noun is used here for the disaster pronounced against the place.
דִּבֶּר
dibber
GROWS FROM
דָּבַר
d-b-r
To speak, say, or declare.
“spoken” in this verse is dibber. The judgment is introduced as something the LORD spoke: the same root gives דָּבָר (dāvar, “word” or “matter”). Speech and the matter pronounced belong to one word-family, making the declaration feel concrete rather than merely verbal.
ALSO GROWS
dāvar: Word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
The spoken judgment is also a matter taking shape in the place.
dibber: Spoke or declared.
דִּבֵּר
This is the verb used for the LORD’s declaration in the verse.
THE PATTERN
The רָעָה (raʿah, “evil/disaster”) word-family can name moral wrongdoing and calamity, letting judgment speak as concrete ruin in a place.
And God saw their deeds, because they turned back from their harmful way; and God relented from the harm he had spoken to do to them, and he did not do it.I shape the light and create the darkness; I make wholeness and create harm. I, the LORD, do all these things.And they will lay you flat to the ground, you and your children within you, and will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time you were looked upon."THE THREAD
And God saw their deeds, because they turned back from their harmful way; and God relented from the harm he had spoken to do to them, and he did not do it.Jonah 3:10 uses הָרָעָה (hā-rāʿāh, “evil/disaster”) for both Nineveh’s “evil way” and the calamity God says he will bring. One word-family can name harmful conduct and the ruin surrounding it, clarifying what “evil” means when it is spoken over a place here.
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