What Does Jeremiah 6:21 Mean?
Therefore thus says the LORD, Behold, I am setting stumbling blocks before this people, and fathers and sons together shall stumble against them. The neighbor and the friend shall lose the way.
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
Therefore thus saith the LORD, Behold, I will lay stumblingblocks before this people, and the fathers and the sons together shall fall upon them; the neighbour and his friend shall perish.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for the stumblingblocks and the word for falling share one root: the obstacle and the collapse belong to one connected movement.
THE MEANING
The LORD places stumblingblocks before this people, and fathers and sons fall over them together; neighbor and friend perish too. The verse holds the danger as communal, reaching through family and friendship.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that family ties and friendship guarantee safety dissolves here: fathers and sons, neighbor and friend, all face the same collapse.
THE ROOT
מִכְשֹׁלִים
miksholîm
GROWS FROM
כשל
To stumble, totter, or fail.
“stumbling blocks” in this verse is miksholîm. “Stumblingblocks” and “shall fall” are not separate ideas in Hebrew: both grow from כשל, the root for stumbling and failure. The sound of the obstacle echoes in the people’s fall, joining what is placed before them to what happens when they meet it.
ALSO GROWS
vekhāshĕlû: And they shall stumble or fall.
וְכָשְׁלוּ
This verb appears in the verse itself, sharing its root with the stumblingblocks and making the link between obstacle and collapse explicit.
kishshālôn: A stumbling, failure, or fall.
כִּשָּׁלוֹן
Proverbs 16:18 uses this noun for a fall, showing another branch of the same root where collapse follows a condition that comes before it.
THE PATTERN
A stumbling point reveals itself in the fall it produces, and its reach can extend from one person to an entire people.
And he shall be for a set-apart place; but for a stone of striking and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, for a trap and for a snare to those who settle in Jerusalem.Swelling goes before breaking, and a breath lifted high goes before a stumbling.And a stone to strike against, and a rock that springs the trap, to those who strike against the word and will not yield, and to this they were also set.THE THREAD
And he shall be for a set-apart place; but for a stone of striking and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, for a trap and for a snare to those who settle in Jerusalem.Jeremiah’s “stumblingblocks” and Isaiah’s “stone of stumbling” both grow from כשל (kāshal), meaning to stumble or fail. Isaiah also names the consequence as a snare reaching both houses of Israel and Jerusalem, opening Jeremiah’s shared fall into a wider pattern.
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