What Does Jeremiah 44:5 Mean?
But they did not hear and respond, nor bend their ear to turn from their evil, to send up no smoke to other gods.
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
But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear to turn from their wickedness, to burn no incense unto other gods.THE KEY
Here, hearing is measured by the turn it produces: the refusal to turn is visible in the incense that keeps rising to other gods.
THE MEANING
This verse names a present refusal: the call is neither heeded nor allowed to change the course. Turning away from wickedness takes a concrete form here, incense to other gods ceases. What continues to receive the offering makes the refusal visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that hearing a warning is already the same as responding to it; here, response is a changed direction visible in practice.
THE ROOT
לָשׁוּב
lashuv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
turn, return, go back
The English “turn” can sound like a momentary pivot, while this root also carries the sense of returning. One branch names return itself, while another names backsliding, so the verse frames refusal as staying on a course rather than making a return; here that course is made visible by the incense.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: return; turning back
תְּשׁוּבָה
This noun grows from the same root and names return as movement, clarifying that the verse’s turn is directional rather than merely mental.
meshubah: backsliding; apostasy
מְשׁוּבָה
This biblical derivative names a turning away that persists, putting the refusal to return on the same directional axis.
שָׁמְעוּ
shame’u
GROWS FROM
שׁמע
shama
hear, listen, heed; respond when the context calls for it
“hear and respond” in this verse is shame’u. The verb translated “hearkened” is the same hear-and-respond root used when response matters. The refusal is described at the level of response, not simply access to sound.
ALSO GROWS
shema: hear; listen and respond
שְׁמַע
This form uses the same root and makes the joined sense of hearing and response plain.
shemuah: report; news heard
שְׁמוּעָה
This noun names a message as something heard; the verse shows that hearing a message and responding to it are distinct.
מֵרָעָתָם
mera’atham
GROWS FROM
רעע
ra’a
be bad or harmful; act badly
“evil” in this verse is mera’atham. This root can name both badness and harm, giving “wickedness” an effect-bearing shade. The verse places that course beside an observable practice, incense offered to other gods, without reducing the harm to an abstract label.
ALSO GROWS
ra: bad; evil
רַע
This adjective shares the root and names what is wrong in the course the verse describes.
ra’ah: evil; harm; calamity
רָעָה
This related noun can name harm as well as evil, illuminating the consequences carried by the word translated “wickedness.”
THE PATTERN
Hearing becomes response when it changes the direction of a person’s conduct.
And you shall turn back to the LORD your God, and you shall hear and respond to his voice according to all that I command you this day, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your living soul.Bend your ear and come to me. Hear and respond, and your living soul shall live. I will cut a covenant of the ages with you, the steady faithful loves of David.But be makers of the word, and not hearers only, miscounting yourselves.THE THREAD
And you shall turn back to the LORD your God, and you shall hear and respond to his voice according to all that I command you this day, you and your children, with all your heart and with all your living soul.Deuteronomy pairs return with obeying the voice; its Hebrew verb for “return” is שׁוּב (shuv, turn or return), the same root as Jeremiah 44:5’s “turn.” That shared root shows what is absent in Jeremiah: the response that carries hearing into a return.
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