What Does Jeremiah 5:25 Mean?
Your crookedness has bent these things away, and your shortcomings have held back good things from you.
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
Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withholden good things from you.THE KEY
The verse describes wrongdoing as a double obstruction: it bends good away and then holds it back.
THE MEANING
Your actions can turn good away and hold it back from reaching you. The verse shows two linked movements: first a bending aside, then a restraint. Good remains in view, but its path to you is obstructed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that wrongdoing is only a private label with no effect beyond itself: here it redirects and withholds the good that reaches you.
THE ROOT
מָנְעוּ
māneʿû
GROWS FROM
מנע
To hold back, restrain, or prevent.
“held back” in this verse is māneʿû. The verb names an act of holding good back, rather than simply describing good as absent. Alongside the bending aside in the first half of the verse, it gives a two-part picture: good is redirected, then restrained from reaching you.
ALSO GROWS
meniʿah: Prevention, obstruction.
מְנִיעָה
This noun makes the root’s holding-back sense visible as a barrier that blocks what might otherwise reach you.
nimnaʿ: Prevented, restrained, or refrained.
נִמְנָע
This form shows the other side of the same action: something is held back or a person holds back from acting.
הִטּוּ
hiṭṭû
GROWS FROM
נטה
To stretch, extend, incline, bend, or turn aside.
“bent these things away” in this verse is hiṭṭû. This root gathers stretching, inclining, and turning aside into one movement. The verse pictures wrongdoing as actively bending the good off its course, not merely leaving a blank where good should be.
ALSO GROWS
nāṭāh: To stretch out, incline, or turn aside.
נָטָה
This verb holds the full range of movement behind the verse’s image of good being bent away.
neṭiyyāh: An inclination or turning.
נְטִיָּה
This noun makes the root’s movement into a direction or tendency, illuminating the verse’s image of good being diverted.
חַטֹּאתֵיכֶם
ḥaṭṭōtêḵem
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss, err, or go wrong; by extension, to sin.
“shortcomings” in this verse is ḥaṭṭōtêḵem. The English word can sound like a fixed category; its source also carries the concrete sense of missing or going wrong. The same word-family names both the miss and, in sacrificial usage, an offering for the missing, keeping the fault and its addressing linguistically close.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, err, or sin.
חָטָא
This verb gives the root’s basic movement, showing sin as a going-wrong with consequences.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: A missing or sin; also an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The same word-family can name both the wrong and an offering associated with it, keeping the miss and its addressing close.
THE PATTERN
What turns away from the good can obstruct its arrival, while uprightness leaves room for good to reach a person.
But your crookedness has cut between you and your God, and your shortcomings have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.For the flesh craves against the breath, and the breath against the flesh; these are set against one another, so that you cannot do the things you would.For the LORD God is sun and shield. The LORD gives favor and weight. He will hold back no good from those who walk in wholeness.THE THREAD
For the LORD God is sun and shield. The LORD gives favor and weight. He will hold back no good from those who walk in wholeness.Jeremiah’s מָנְעוּ (māneʿû, “they held back”) and the Psalm’s יִמְנַע (yimnaʿ, “he will withhold”) share the root מנע (mānaʿ, “hold back”). The same verb makes a precise counterpoint: Jeremiah names good held back through human wrongdoing; the Psalm says the LORD withholds no good from those who walk uprightly.
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