What Does Jeremiah 46:22 Mean?
Her voice shall go like a serpent, for they march in force, and they come against her with axes, like those who hew wood.
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 voice thereof shall go like a serpent; for they shall march with an army, and come against her with axes, as hewers of wood.THE KEY
The same Hebrew verb makes her serpent-like voice go and the army march, binding sound and assault into one movement.
THE MEANING
Her voice goes like a serpent while an armed force advances with axes, coming at her as woodcutters come to trees. Sound and bodily violence share the scene: the voice moves, and the cutting force arrives.
THE ROOT
יֵלֵךְ
yēlēkh
GROWS FROM
הלך
halakh
walk, go, proceed
The Hebrew uses this same verb first for her voice and again for the army; the KJV’s shift from “go” to “march” hides the repetition. Her serpent-like sound and the attackers’ advance become two movements in the same scene.
ALSO GROWS
holekh: one who walks or goes
הוֹלֵךְ
This form names the one in motion; in the verse, both the voice and the army are given movement.
halikhah: walking; a course or manner of going
הֲלִיכָה
The root can describe a course as well as a step, fitting the verse’s linked movements from serpent-like voice to advancing force.
THE PATTERN
Scripture lets sound move through a scene, so hearing can register a presence already on the way.
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breath of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.And it shall be, when you hear and respond to the footfall in the crowns of the weeping trees, then you shall stir yourself, for then the LORD shall go out before you to strike the camp of the Philistines.But I say, Have they not heard? Yes, indeed, their sound went out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the inhabited earth.THE THREAD
And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking in the garden in the breath of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.Genesis 3:8 places קוֹל (qol, voice or sound) beside a form of הָלַךְ (halakh, walk or go): the LORD God’s voice is heard walking in the garden. Jeremiah repeats that voice-and-motion pairing, then uses the same root for the army’s march, making sound and physical approach part of one moving scene.
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