What Does Jeremiah 5:12 Mean?
They have denied the LORD, and said, “It is not he. Evil shall not come upon us. Neither shall we see sword nor hunger.”
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
They have belied the LORD, and said, It is not he; neither shall evil come upon us; neither shall we see sword nor famine:THE KEY
The verse exposes a two-part lie: deny the LORD, then declare that sword and famine cannot reach you.
THE MEANING
This denial is alive wherever the LORD is dismissed and that dismissal becomes certainty that harm cannot arrive. The verse names the danger plainly: sword and famine remain real even when people insist they will not reach them. A claim of immunity does not make its consequences unreal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false certainty this verse undoes is that denying the LORD makes sword and famine unable to reach you.
THE ROOT
כִּחֲשׁוּ
kiḥăšû
GROWS FROM
כחשׁ
k-ḥ-š
to deny, lie, or deal falsely
“denied” in this verse is kiḥăšû. The root makes “belied” an act of denial or false dealing, not just an inaccurate statement: they disavow the LORD and build their prediction on that disavowal. A related noun names falsehood itself, so the denial continues into their claim about the future.
ALSO GROWS
kāḥaš: to deny, lie, or deal falsely
כָּחַשׁ
This verb holds denial and deception together in the speakers’ words about the LORD.
kaḥaš: falsehood, deceit
כַּחַשׁ
The same consonants name falsehood as a condition; their assurance that no harm can come carries the denial forward.
רָעָה
rāʿāh
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
to be bad, bring harm, or ruin
The Hebrew word can name adversity and disaster as well as what is morally evil. The verse makes that concrete by naming sword and famine as the harm they insist will never reach them.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: bad, evil, harmful
רַע
This related form can describe what causes harm, giving “evil” a concrete sense beyond moral wrongdoing.
rāʿāh: calamity, distress, adversity
רָעָה
This form names the kind of harm that may befall someone; sword and famine make that sense plain here.
THE PATTERN
Declaring that danger cannot reach you does not prevent its arrival; it exposes a false refuge built from certainty.
Because you have said, We have cut a covenant with death, and with the grave we have made an agreement; when the flooding lash shall pass through, it shall not come to us, for we have made lies our shelter, and in falsehood we have hidden ourselves.All who miss the mark among my people shall die by the sword, who say, The harm shall not reach us, nor get ahead of us.When they say, "Wholeness and firm footing," then sudden ruin stands over them, like labor pains upon a woman carrying a child in her womb, and they will not escape.THE THREAD
In breaking away and lying against the LORD, and turning our backs on our God, speaking pressure and revolt, conceiving and murmuring from the heart words of lies.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew root כחשׁ (kāḥaš, deny or deal falsely) in “lying against the LORD,” clarifying the force of Jeremiah’s “belied.” Isaiah also shows denial spreading into departure, speech, and falsehood.
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