What Does Jeremiah 46:13 Mean?
The word that the LORD spoke to Jeremiah the prophet, how Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon would come and strike the land of Egypt.
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
The word that the LORD spake to Jeremiah the prophet, how Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon should come and smite the land of Egypt.THE KEY
The “word” here is more than an abstract message: it names a king’s arrival and a land under assault.
THE MEANING
The verse places you before a spoken word that names a king’s arrival and a land being struck. Its language holds the violence in plain view. Egypt, מִצְרַיִם (Mitsrayim), carries the image of the two narrows, so the announced strike meets a place named for constriction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the idea that a divine word must be gentle or abstract: here it names a ruler arriving to strike a land.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
dāḇār
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
Speak, utter.
דָּבָר (davar) can mean both “word” and “matter” or “thing.” Here the word names a concrete matter: a king coming to strike a land.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke; uttered.
דִּבֵּר
The same root names the act of speaking and the word spoken, keeping the declaration attached to a speaker.
devarim: Words, matters, things.
דְּבָרִים
This plural preserves the link between speech and the matter being spoken of; in this verse, that matter is an invasion.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitsrayim
GROWS FROM
צ־ר־ר
ṣ-r-r
Bind, press, or constrict; echoed in צַר (tsar), narrow.
“Egypt” in this verse is Mitsrayim. Mitsrayim carries צַר (tsar, “narrow”) with the dual ending -ַיִם (-ayim): the two narrows. Here, that name sits beside an announced strike, holding the image of constriction alongside the land’s literal violence.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow, constricted.
צַר
The name of Egypt carries this image of narrowness into the verse.
tsarar: To bind, press, or trouble.
צָרַר
This branch adds the sense of pressure and constraint to the narrowing carried by the place-name.
THE PATTERN
A spoken word can announce a concrete event before that event arrives.
For I am the LORD. I will speak, and the word I speak shall be done. It shall no more be drawn out. For in your days, O rebellious house, I will speak a word and do it, says the Lord GOD.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.Now I tell you, before it comes to be, so that when it has come to be, you may lean your weight on this, that I AM.THE THREAD
And the LORD said to me, You have seen well, for I keep watch over my word to do it.Both verses turn on דָּבָר (davar), “word” and “matter.” Jeremiah 1:12 makes the word’s movement toward fulfillment explicit, sharpening how Jeremiah 46:13 presents a spoken declaration with a concrete subject: a king arriving to strike a land.
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