What Does Jeremiah 6:22 Mean?

Thus says the LORD, Behold, a people comes from the north country, and a great nation is roused from the flanks of the earth.

Jeremiah 6:22 · SDV

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.

This verse in the King James

King James wording

King James Version

Thus saith the LORD, Behold, a people cometh from the north country, and a great nation shall be raised from the sides of the earth.

THE KEY

The verb translated “raised” also means being roused awake: the nation is pictured as stirring into motion from the earth’s far edge.

THE MEANING

The warning names a people coming from the north and a great nation being roused from the earth’s farthest reaches. What seems remote is already moving toward the reader’s world.

THE ROOT

יֵעוֹר

yēʿōr

GROWS FROM

עור

ʿ-w-r

To wake, rouse, or stir from sleep or inactivity.

The verb carries the image of waking or stirring, so the nation is pictured as roused into action. “Raised” holds the sense of emergence alongside this awakening.

ALSO GROWS

ʿûr: Wake; rouse.

עוּר

This basic verb shows the movement from inactivity into alertness that shades the nation’s being raised.

hēʿîr: Awaken; stir up.

הֵעִיר

This causative form makes the root’s sense of stirring into action especially clear.

מִיַּרְכְּתֵי־אָרֶץ

miyyarketei ʾāreṣ

GROWS FROM

ירך

y-r-k

Thigh or flank; by extension, a side, rear part, or extremity.

The Hebrew image can suggest the earth’s flanks or remote recesses, giving “sides” a sense of farthest reaches. The nation’s source is beyond the near horizon, yet it is being roused toward arrival.

ALSO GROWS

yārēkh: Thigh; flank or side.

יָרֵךְ

The bodily flank makes the image of the earth’s sides concrete.

yarkāh: Remote side, extremity, or recess.

יַרְכָּה

This form connects the phrase to the earth’s distant outer reaches.

THE PATTERN

The warning names danger through its approach: a force is already moving toward the place it will strike.

Then the LORD said to me, Out of the north the evil shall be opened upon all who settle the land.

Jeremiah 1:14 · SDVThe warning locates danger in the north and describes it breaking forth toward the land.

For, behold, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hurrying nation, which goes across the wide places of the land, to seize the tents that are not theirs.

Habakkuk 1:6 · SDVA nation is raised into motion and advances across the land, making the approaching threat visible.

And when you see Jerusalem encircled by armies, then know that its emptying has drawn near.

Luke 21:20 · SDVThe encircling armies make the coming devastation perceptible before it arrives.

THE THREAD

Then the LORD said to me, Out of the north the evil shall be opened upon all who settle the land.

Jeremiah 1:14 · SDV

Both verses use ⁨צָפוֹן⁩ (ṣāfôn, north) to name the direction from which danger comes. Jeremiah 1:14 describes it breaking forth across the land, opening this verse’s distant source into an approaching force.

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