What Does Jeremiah 50:31 Mean?
Behold, I am against you, O most seething one, declares the Lord GOD of hosts, for your day has come, the hour of my visitation upon 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
Behold, I am against thee, O thou most proud, saith the Lord GOD of hosts: for thy day is come, the time that I will visit thee.THE KEY
The one who boils over in presumption meets the Lord’s direct attention as opposition when the appointed day arrives.
THE MEANING
Where pride rises into presumption, this verse speaks plainly: the Lord stands against it. The day arrives, and God’s visitation brings the proud posture into direct reckoning.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that pride can make itself untouchable: the moment it rises above all judgment, its day is already arriving.
THE ROOT
זֵד
zēḏ
GROWS FROM
זוד
z-w-d
To boil up; by extension, to act presumptuously or arrogantly.
English “proud” can sound like an inward opinion, while זֵד carries the sense of something rising up and overreaching. The root’s boiling image gives the verse’s accusation a sharper edge: this is presumption swelling beyond its bounds.
ALSO GROWS
zûḏ: To boil; to act presumptuously.
זוּד
The verb holds the physical image of boiling and the figurative sense of overreaching conduct in one root.
nāzîḏ: A boiled dish or stew.
נָזִיד
Genesis 25:29 uses this word for the pottage Jacob cooks, making the root’s boiling image audible beneath “proud.”
פְּקַדְתִּיךָ
peqaḏtîḵā I will
GROWS FROM
פקד
p-q-d
To attend to, oversee, appoint, muster, or visit.
“visitation upon you” in this verse is peqaḏtîḵā I will. The Hebrew root carries attentive oversight and direct engagement. Here, God’s visitation is an appointed encounter that brings the proud into account.
ALSO GROWS
pāqaḏ: To attend to, visit, muster, or appoint.
פָּקַד
This is the verb rendered “visit” in the verse; it presents God’s action as direct attention.
pequddāh: Oversight, charge, appointment, or visitation.
פְּקֻדָּה
This related noun carries the language of oversight and appointment, deepening the sense of an encounter that has come due.
THE PATTERN
Presumption that lifts itself beyond limit is brought down when the Lord meets it directly.
Swelling goes before breaking, and a breath lifted high goes before a stumbling.The lifted eyes of man shall be brought low, and the heights of men shall bow down, and the LORD alone shall be lifted high in that day.But he gives greater favor. Therefore it says, God sets himself against those who lift themselves high, and gives favor to those made low.THE THREAD
And Joseph said to his brothers, "I die. God will surely visit you, and bring you up from this land to the land he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob."The verb for “visit” in both verses comes from פקד (paqad), meaning to attend to or visit. Genesis links that attention with being brought out; Jeremiah links it with confrontation, revealing visitation as decisive divine engagement whose outcome the passage names.
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