What Does Jeremiah 5:17 Mean?
And they shall eat your harvest and your bread, which your sons and your daughters should eat. They shall eat your flocks and your herds. They shall eat your vines and your fig trees. They shall dispossess your fenced cities, upon which you lean your full weight, with the sword.
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 they shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy sons and thy daughters should eat: they shall eat up thy flocks and thine herds: they shall eat up thy vines and thy fig trees: they shall impoverish thy fenced cities, wherein thou trustedst, with the sword.THE KEY
The invader consumes every layer of provision, then takes the fortified cities trusted to keep it safe.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks of violence as a complete stripping: the invader consumes the harvest and bread meant for children, the flocks and herds, the vines and fig trees, then takes the fortified cities by the sword. Provision, family sustenance, livelihood, and refuge all lie within its reach.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The particular lie this undoes is that fortified places make a people untouchable; the verse shows the sword reaching even the cities in which they place their confidence.
THE ROOT
אָכַל
ʾākal
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
to eat or consume
“eat your harvest and your bread” in this verse is ʾākal. The verb for eating repeats across harvest and bread, livestock, vines, and fig trees, making the attack feel like consumption sweeping through the whole landscape of provision. What feeds the family and sustains its livelihood is all taken into the same act of devouring.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākal: to eat, consume
אָכַל
The repeated verb draws the different losses into one relentless action.
maʾakhal: food, what is eaten
מַאֲכָל
This related noun makes the connection between consuming and the very provision that sustains life.
יָרֹשׁ
yārōš
GROWS FROM
ירשׁ
y-r-sh
to take possession, inherit, or dispossess
“dispossess your fenced cities” in this verse is yārōš. The word rendered “impoverish” carries the sense of taking possession or dispossessing. The cities are not merely damaged: the invader takes what lies behind their defenses, turning security into loss of possession.
ALSO GROWS
yāraš: to take possession or inherit
יָרַשׁ
Its sense of possession makes the city’s loss a forced transfer of what was held.
yerushah: possession, inheritance
יְרֻשָּׁה
This related noun shows how the same root can name what is possessed and inherited.
מִבְצָר
mibtsar
GROWS FROM
בצר
b-ts-r
to enclose, fortify, make inaccessible
“fenced” in this verse is mibtsar. The word for a fortified place carries the sense of being enclosed and made inaccessible. Yet these are the very cities in which the people trust, and the verse says the sword reaches them.
ALSO GROWS
mibtsar: fortress, fortified place
מִבְצָר
It names the stronghold meant to keep danger out.
bātsūr: fortified, inaccessible
בָּצוּר
This related form makes clear the security the city is built to provide, even as the verse shows it failing.
THE PATTERN
Violence becomes total when it consumes both the means of living and the places trusted to protect them.
And they camped against them, and ruined the yield of the land, until you come to Gaza, and left no living for Israel, neither sheep, nor ox, nor donkey.For days will come upon you, when your enemies will drive stakes around you, and surround you, and press you in on every side.THE THREAD
And he shall eat the fruit of your cattle, and the fruit of your ground, until you are destroyed; which shall not leave you grain, new wine, or fresh oil, or the young of your herd, or the flocks of your sheep, until he has destroyed you.Both verses use אָכַל (ʾākal, “eat”) to picture an invader consuming livestock and the land’s yield. Deuteronomy follows that same consuming action to its endpoint in destruction, while Jeremiah adds the seizure of the fortified cities.
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