What Does Jeremiah 50:7 Mean?
All who caught them have devoured them. Those who press them said, We are not guilty, for they have missed the mark against the LORD, the pasture of alignment, even the LORD, the one their fathers stretched toward.
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
All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries said, We offend not, because they have sinned against the LORD, the habitation of justice, even the LORD, the hope of their fathers.THE KEY
Calling the consumed guilty does not make the devourers innocent; the LORD remains the home of justice and hope.
THE MEANING
Your failure can be real, and another person’s accusation can still cover the harm they do to you. Their claim of innocence does not settle the matter: the LORD remains the dwelling of alignment and the hope carried by those before you. The verse holds both truths together, your missing is not the same as another person’s innocence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that if you have done wrong, whatever others do to you is automatically just and leaves them guiltless.
THE ROOT
אכלום
akhalum
GROWS FROM
אכל
Eat, consume.
“have devoured them” in this verse is akhalum. The word rendered “devoured” comes from the ordinary root for eating. The image makes the accusation stark: people consume others, then claim innocence because of their victims’ wrongdoing.
ALSO GROWS
ʾākal: To eat or consume.
אָכַל
It is the same root as “devoured,” keeping the verse’s charge concrete.
ʾōkhel: Food or something eaten.
אֹכֶל
This branch sharpens the image of treating people as sustenance.
צֶדֶק
tsedeq
GROWS FROM
צדק
Alignment; what is right or just.
Justice here is more than a standard an accuser can claim to uphold: it has its dwelling in the LORD. The verse places the accusers’ verdict beside that dwelling, exposing the gap between accusation and alignment.
ALSO GROWS
tsedeq: Justice or right alignment.
צֶדֶק
It names what the LORD’s habitation embodies, beyond what the accusers declare.
tsaddiq: A person characterized as just or aligned.
צַדִּיק
This branch connects alignment to the person’s actual character, not merely their claim.
מִקְוֵה
miqveh
GROWS FROM
קוה
Wait for, expect; hope.
“the one their fathers stretched toward” in this verse is miqveh. The LORD is called the hope of their fathers: the word carries expectation, something waited for across generations. The accusers’ verdict does not exhaust the future held in that expectation.
ALSO GROWS
qavah: To wait for or expect.
קָוָה
This verbal branch shows hope as an active expectancy.
tiqvah: Hope or expectation.
תִּקְוָה
It echoes the verse’s claim that hope endures beyond the accusers’ judgment.
THE PATTERN
An accusation against someone does not turn consuming them into justice or make the accuser guiltless.
How long do you judge crookedness, and lift up the faces of the wicked? Selah.Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and do not let your heart leap when he stumbles.Therefore you have no word to answer with, O human, whoever you are who judges others, for in whatever you judge in another you press the sentence down upon yourself, for you who judge practice the very same things.THE THREAD
Therefore all who eat you shall be eaten, and all who press you, every one of them, shall go into captivity; those who despoil you shall be despoiled, and all who prey on you I will give for prey.Jeremiah 30:16 repeats the אכל (ʾākal, eat or consume) root: those who devour are themselves devoured. The shared root turns the image back on the accusers, whose claim about another’s wrongdoing does not erase their own act of consuming.
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