What Does Jeremiah 49:14 Mean?
I have heard a report from the LORD, and an envoy is sent among the nations, saying, Gather yourselves, and come against her, and rise up to battle.
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
I have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent unto the heathen, saying, Gather ye together, and come against her, and rise up to the battle.THE KEY
The report and the act of hearing share one Hebrew root, and that heard word is immediately sent outward as a summons to battle.
THE MEANING
The verse sets a report from the LORD in motion through an envoy among the nations. Its message gathers them against her and raises them for battle. The word’s force includes violence: the message itself is a summons to war.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that divine speech must arrive only as comfort; here the message carries an explicit summons to violence.
THE ROOT
שָׁלוּחַ
shaluach
GROWS FROM
ש־ל־ח
sh-l-ḥ
Send forth; release or let go.
The envoy is shaluach, sent forth from the root ש־ל־ח. That root can also mean release or let go, so the same word-family holds both a dispatch outward and a release from restraint.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send forth, release, let go.
שָׁלַח
The same root appears in the command “Let my people go,” linking this envoy’s dispatch with the language of release.
Shiloach: Shiloach, associated with Siloam’s pool or waters; “sent.”
שִׁלֹחַ
This name carries the same sending image in a place associated with sent waters, while Jeremiah’s word sends an envoy among the nations.
שְׁמוּעָה
shemuʿah
GROWS FROM
ש־מ־ע
sh-m-ʿ
Hear, listen, attend; in some forms, hear and respond.
The noun shemuʿah (“report”) and the verb shamati (“I heard”) repeat the same root in the opening phrase. The sound echo binds the report to the act of hearing: it comes from the LORD, then moves outward through the envoy.
ALSO GROWS
shamaʿ: Hear, listen.
שָׁמַע
This is the verb behind “I have heard,” making the speaker’s hearing part of the same root-pattern as the report.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings, what is heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This is the word translated “rumour”; its shared root with “heard” ties the report to its reception.
THE PATTERN
A summons gathers nations into battle as an instrument of divine judgment.
The roar of a crowd in the mountains, like that of a great people; a tumult of the kingdoms of nations gathered together. The LORD of hosts counts the armies for battle.Call this out among the nations. Set apart war. Wake the mighty ones. Let all the men of war draw near; let them come up.For they are breaths of demons, making signs, which go out to the kings of the whole inhabited world, to gather them to the war of that great day of God, the All-Ruling.THE THREAD
Then the LORD said to Moses, Go in to Pharaoh, and say to him, Thus says the LORD, the God of the Hebrews. Let my people go, that they may serve me.Jeremiah’s envoy is shaluach (שָׁלוּחַ, sent forth), from shalach (שָׁלַח, send or release), the same root in the command “Let my people go.” The root links a dispatch among the nations with a release from a ruler’s grip.
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