What Does Jeremiah 6:25 Mean?
Do not go out into the field, nor walk the road, for the sword of the enemy and terror circle on every side.
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
Go not forth into the field, nor walk by the way; for the sword of the enemy and fear is on every side.THE KEY
The Hebrew phrase behind “fear is on every side” names terror as an enclosure, so even the field and the familiar road lie inside the danger.
THE MEANING
The warning speaks now to the moment when both open ground and the road you know are exposed to an enemy’s sword. The verse names fear as surrounding danger, not as a threat confined to one route. Movement itself offers no guaranteed escape here.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that choosing a familiar road guarantees safety: here both the open field and the traveled way are exposed.
THE ROOT
מָגוֹר
magor
GROWS FROM
גור
gur
To dread or fear; here it gives fear the sense of terror.
English can make fear sound like a feeling inside a person, while מָגוֹר מִסָּבִיב (magor missaviv, “terror all around”) gives that terror a perimeter. The same phrase resurfaces as a name in Jeremiah 20:3, compressing the surrounding threat into a name.
ALSO GROWS
gur: To dread or fear.
גּוּר
The verb shows the fear beneath the noun: this is dread, not merely caution about a route.
megurah: Terror or dread.
מְגוּרָה
This related noun carries the same fear-root into another form, reinforcing how the verse names the surrounding condition.
דֶּרֶךְ
derek
GROWS FROM
דרך
darak
To tread, step, or travel.
English makes a way sound like a route simply waiting there; דֶּרֶךְ (derek, “way” or “path”) belongs to a root of treading. The road is a path already walked, yet the verse places it under threat alongside the open field.
ALSO GROWS
darak: To tread, step, or march.
דָּרַךְ
The verb makes the path an act of stepping through it, which sharpens the warning against walking this way.
midrakh: A place to tread or a footstep.
מִדְרָךְ
This related word keeps the path connected to the steps that mark it; familiarity does not place those steps beyond danger.
חֶרֶב
cherev
GROWS FROM
חרב
charav
To dry out, lie waste, or become desolate.
The word for sword shares its root letters with the vocabulary of desolation. That echo lets the threat carry the ruin it brings within the word itself.
ALSO GROWS
charev: To be dry or desolate.
חָרֵב
This verbal form places the sword alongside the language of what has been laid waste.
chorbah: Ruin or desolation.
חָרְבָּה
This related noun makes the sword’s destructive shadow audible in the shared root.
THE PATTERN
When threat surrounds a person, Scripture gives that terror a repeated name and circumference.
And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, The LORD has not called your name Pashur, but Magor-missabib, terror on every side.For I have heard the defaming of many, terror on every side. Tell, they say, and we will tell it. All the men of my wholeness watched for my stumbling, saying, Perhaps he will be coaxed, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our vengeance on him.For I hear the whispering of many; terror is all around, as they sit down together against me, and plot to take my living soul.THE THREAD
And it came to pass on the morrow, that Pashur brought Jeremiah out of the stocks. Then Jeremiah said to him, The LORD has not called your name Pashur, but Magor-missabib, terror on every side.Jeremiah 6:25 uses מָגוֹר מִסָּבִיב (magor missaviv, “terror all around”); Jeremiah 20:3 uses the same phrase as a name. The connection turns the warning’s enclosing threat into a compressed name.
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