What Does Jeremiah 46:7 Mean?
Who is this that rises like the Nile, whose waters heave like the rivers?
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
Who is this that cometh up as a flood, whose waters are moved as the rivers?THE KEY
A force can rise like a river, yet the verse first asks who it is, not to mistake its scale for its nature.
THE MEANING
When a force in your life surges with the scale of a river, its intensity is visible, but its nature still asks to be discerned. The verse meets the spectacle with a question: who is this beneath all that motion?
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A force that rises dramatically must be unquestionable and self-explanatory.
THE ROOT
נְהָרוֹת
neharot
GROWS FROM
נהר
To flow or stream.
The word for rivers shares its root with a verb for flowing. That same root describes nations streaming toward the mountain of the LORD in Isaiah 2:2: the motion is shared, while its direction changes the image from upheaval to gathering.
ALSO GROWS
nahar: A flowing watercourse.
נָהָר
The verse pictures the waters as moving through channels, not resting in place.
wenaharu: The verb Isaiah 2:2 uses for the nations flowing toward the mountain of the LORD.
וְנָהֲרוּ
The same root can describe a surge that threatens and a movement that gathers; the direction of the flow matters.
יִתְגָּעֲשׁוּ
yitga'ashu
GROWS FROM
געש
To surge, quake, or be violently agitated.
“heave” in this verse is yitga'ashu. The Hebrew verb carries the force of turbulent upheaval, giving the waters more than a neutral motion. The same root can describe the earth shaking, so the verse presents the surge as elemental force.
ALSO GROWS
yitga'ashu: The form used here for the waters’ turbulent motion.
יִתְגָּעֲשׁוּ
It gives the waters a convulsive force beneath the English word “moved.”
vattig'ash: A form of the same root describing the earth shaking in 2 Samuel 22:8.
וַתִּגְעַשׁ
The root names upheaval in the land as well as in the water.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures massed power as water in motion, making its surge visible without confusing its noise for its identity.
The rivers lift up, O LORD; they raise their voice; the rivers lift up their pounding.Daniel answered and said, I saw in my vision by night, and look, the four breaths of the heavens burst upon the great sea.And he says to me, The waters that you perceived, where the harlot sits, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.THE THREAD
And it shall come to pass in the hindmost days, that the mountain of the LORD's house shall be set firm at the head of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills, and all nations shall flow toward it.Jeremiah’s rivers surge as a threatening mass; Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root for nations flowing toward the mountain of the LORD. The root holds the motion in common while the direction changes the image from upheaval to gathering.
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