What Does Jeremiah 5:13 Mean?
The prophets shall become breath, and the word is not in them. So shall it be done to them.
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
And the prophets shall become wind, and the word is not in them: thus shall it be done unto them.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “word” can also mean “matter”: without it within them, the prophets’ speech has no substance and becomes wind.
THE MEANING
When a voice claims prophetic authority but has no word within it, its speech thins to wind, without substance. The verse’s verdict turns back upon the speakers: what is done to them matches what they have become.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A prophetic title guarantees that its speaker carries a true word; this verse breaks that equation by naming the prophets wind with no word in them.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
dābār
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
Speech; a word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר (dābār, word or matter) can name both what is spoken and a thing or affair. So “the word is not in them” points beyond missing speech: what they say lacks substance.
ALSO GROWS
dibbēr: To speak or utter words.
דִּבֵּר
This verbal branch shows the root at work as speech, which the verse weighs against the absent word.
devarim: Words, matters, or affairs.
דְּבָרִים
The plural keeps speech and matters together, illuminating the verse’s picture of speech without substance.
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
r-w-ḥ
To blow or move as air; breath and wind.
רוּחַ (ruach, breath or wind) is one word for moving air, whether it is wind outside or breath within a living body. Here the wind image makes the contrast stark: the prophets have air, but the word that would give their speech substance is absent.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Breath: moving air within a living body.
רוּחַ
This is the same Hebrew word rendered “wind” in the verse, keeping breath and wind joined beneath the English distinction.
ruḥot: Winds; the plural form of the same word.
רוּחוֹת
The plural preserves the root’s image of moving air, while the verse compresses it into the prophets’ singular fate: wind.
נְבִיאִים
nevi'im
GROWS FROM
נבא
n-b-ʾ
To prophesy or proclaim as a prophet.
The name of the role and the act of proclaiming share this root, but the title does not prove that a true word is present. The verse holds the prophets’ identity beside their emptiness: they proclaim, yet become wind.
ALSO GROWS
navi: A prophet; one who proclaims.
נָבִיא
The singular form makes clear that the verse judges the speakers themselves, not merely an isolated message.
nevu'ah: Prophecy or prophetic utterance.
נְבוּאָה
This branch names the speech associated with the prophet, sharpening the verse’s charge that the word is absent from them.
THE PATTERN
A prophetic claim without the word it claims to carry becomes hollow speech, and that hollowness returns as consequence.
Thus says the LORD of hosts, Do not hear and respond to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they make you vapor. They speak a sight of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD.For they sow breath, and they will reap the whirlwind. It has no stalk. The sprout will yield no meal. If it yields, strangers will swallow it up.These are dry springs and clouds driven along by a storm, to whom the murk of darkness is kept for the ages.THE THREAD
Is not my word like fire? says the LORD; and like a hammer that shatters the rock?Jeremiah 5:13 says the word, דָּבָר (dābār, word or matter), is absent from the prophets; here the LORD’s דָּבָר (dābār, word or matter) is fire and a hammer. The contrast gives the absence weight: the word acts with force, while the prophets’ speech dissipates as wind.
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