What Does Jeremiah 5:15 Mean?
Look, I will bring a nation against you from far away, O house of Israel, declares the LORD. It is a nation that never runs dry, a nation from the ages, a nation whose tongue you do not know, nor do you hear what they say.
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
Lo, I will bring a nation upon you from far, O house of Israel, saith the LORD: it is a mighty nation, it is an ancient nation, a nation whose language thou knowest not, neither understandest what they say.THE KEY
The threat is not only a nation coming from far away; its speech is a distance you cannot cross, because you cannot know its tongue or hear its words.
THE MEANING
The LORD says he is bringing a nation against you, strong, old, and distant. You do not know its tongue, and its speech remains beyond your understanding. The verse holds the threat and the estrangement together: the approaching force is beyond your familiarity and comprehension.
THE ROOT
תִשְׁמַע
tishma
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear, listen.
The Hebrew verb means “hear” where the KJV says “understandest.” The verse moves from not knowing the tongue to not hearing what is spoken, revealing that the barrier reaches the act of receiving speech.
ALSO GROWS
shama: Hear, listen.
שָׁמַע
This is the root verb in the verse: the foreign speech cannot be heard as something the listener understands.
shemu'ah: A report or news, something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows how hearing carries what is reported; here, the words cannot arrive as intelligible news.
לְשֹׁנוֹ
leshono
GROWS FROM
לשן
Tongue; by extension, language.
The word translated “language” is literally “his tongue.” The unfamiliarity is not an abstract difference between peoples: the verse locates it in the tongue that carries speech.
ALSO GROWS
lashon: Tongue; language.
לָשׁוֹן
The word names both the physical tongue and the language it carries, tying bodily speech to shared understanding.
lashon hara: An evil tongue; slander.
לְשׁוֹן הָרָע
The phrase keeps the tongue visible as the instrument of speech; here, the barrier is that the tongue’s words cannot be understood.
תֵדַע
teda
GROWS FROM
ידע
Know, perceive.
“knowest” in this verse is teda. The word for knowing points to recognition by encounter, not simply possession of information. The nation’s tongue is outside the listener’s familiarity, so its speech has no shared ground from which to be received.
ALSO GROWS
da'at: Knowledge, knowing.
דַּעַת
This noun makes the gap explicit: the tongue is outside what the listener knows.
madda: Knowledge, understanding.
מַדָּע
The shared root links the verse’s failure to know a language with the broader absence of recognized understanding.
THE PATTERN
When people cannot know or hear one another’s language, speech becomes a barrier to shared meaning.
Come, let us go down, and there mix up their lip, so that they may not hear one another's lip and respond.When this voice arose, the crowd came together and was poured into confusion, because each one heard them speaking in his own tongue.So if I do not perceive the strength of the voice, I will be a babbler to the one who speaks, and the one who speaks will be a babbler to me.THE THREAD
The LORD shall lift up a nation against you from far, from the edge of the earth, as the eagle swoops; a nation whose tongue you shall not understand;Deuteronomy uses לָשׁוֹן (lashon, tongue or language) and שָׁמַע (shama, hear) in its warning about a nation coming from far. Jeremiah repeats that root pattern: the approaching nation is distant in place, and its speech is beyond the hearer.
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