What Does Jeremiah 5:27 Mean?
As a cage is full of birds, so their houses are full of deceit. Therefore they have grown great and grown rich.
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
As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and waxen rich.THE KEY
Here deceit is not a flaw beside the wealth; it is what fills the house and produces its apparent success.
THE MEANING
This verse names a living pattern: a household can grow great through what fills it, and that fullness can be deceit rather than soundness. The cage image makes the abundance feel like a packed catch, not free flourishing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Visible wealth does not prove that a household is sound; abundance can grow from deceit.
THE ROOT
מִרְמָה
mirmah
GROWS FROM
רמה
To deceive or deal treacherously.
The root links deceit with treachery, giving the house’s fullness the character of practiced betrayal rather than an occasional mistake. The verse places that fullness beside the household’s growing wealth, so its prosperity cannot be separated from what fills it.
ALSO GROWS
mirmah: Deceit, treachery.
מִרְמָה
This is the word in the verse: deceit fills the houses as birds fill a cage.
remiyyah: Deceit or treachery; in some contexts, slackness.
רְמִיָּה
This related word keeps the same root’s sense of unfaithful dealing, showing deceit as a way of acting, not just a false statement.
THE PATTERN
When deceit becomes a means of accumulation, wealth exposes harm rather than proving integrity.
Treasures gathered by a lying tongue are a vapor scattered by those who seek death.For her rich are filled with violence, and those who settle in her have spoken lies, and their tongue is deceitful in their mouth.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
The trader, Canaan, has scales of deceit in his hand. He loves to press down.Hosea uses the same Hebrew word for deceit, מִרְמָה (mirmah), and places it in the merchant’s hand as he weighs goods. Jeremiah shows deceit filling a house; Hosea reveals it operating in exchange.
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