What Does Jeremiah 44:9 Mean?
Have you forgotten the evil of your fathers, the kings of Judah, their wives, your own, and the evil of your wives, which they have done in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem?
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
Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they have committed in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem?THE KEY
The question treats forgetting as the cover that lets harm travel from ancestors and rulers into one’s own household and streets.
THE MEANING
The question meets you inside a record of repeated harm: what parents do, what rulers do, what households do, and what you do are all placed in view. It refuses to leave wrongdoing safely with the past or with public leaders; your own actions stand in the same sentence, alongside what is done in the land and streets.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse dissolves the belief that inherited wrongdoing belongs only to the past, while your own actions remain outside its account.
THE ROOT
הַשְׁכַחְתֶּם
hashkhaḥtem
GROWS FROM
שׁכח
sh-kh-ch
To forget, to lose from awareness.
The question places forgetting amid a repeated record: ancestors, rulers, households, and the people addressed. A related noun, שִׁכְחָה (shikhchah), means a forgotten sheaf left in a field; what slips from memory can still be there, uncollected.
ALSO GROWS
shakhach: To forget.
שָׁכַח
This is the root verb beneath the question about whether the people have forgotten.
shikhchah: A forgotten sheaf, left behind in a field.
שִׁכְחָה
It evokes what remains present even when it is no longer held in mind.
רָעוֹת
ra'ot
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To be bad, do harm, or cause distress.
“wickedness” in this verse is ra'ot. The verse repeats the plural רָעוֹת (ra’ot) across different people and households. The root can name harm and distress, keeping the charge grounded in what is done rather than leaving it as an abstract label.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil.
רַע
This adjective shares the root and shows the wider field behind the repeated charge.
ra'ah: Evil, harm, or calamity.
רָעָה
This singular noun is the form behind the verse’s plural, naming the harms gathered across its list.
THE PATTERN
A generation enters the record of inherited harm when its own actions continue the pattern.
We have missed the mark with our fathers, we have bent crooked, we have made ourselves restless.So you bear witness and take pleasure with the deeds of your fathers, for they killed them, and you build their memorial tombs.THE THREAD
They hurried to forget his works. They did not wait for his counsel.Both verses use שׁכח (shakhach, forget): Jeremiah asks whether the record of harm has slipped from view, while the psalm places forgetting alongside not waiting for counsel. Together they show how a pattern loses its interruption when what has been seen is no longer kept in mind.
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