What Does Jeremiah 8:13 Mean?
I will surely gather them in, says the LORD. There will be no grapes on the vine, no figs on the fig tree, and the leaf will wither. What I have given them will cross over from them.
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
I will surely consume them, saith the LORD: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb behind “consume” means “gather,” turning the loss into a harvest where even the people are collected away as their trees fail.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you with loss at every layer: there are no grapes or figs, the leaf withers, and the people are gathered away. What has been given passes beyond their keeping as the signs of life disappear; the text leaves the deprivation stark.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that loss is confined to a failed harvest: the leaves wither, and the people themselves are gathered away.
THE ROOT
אָסֹף אֲסִיפֵם
ʾāsōp ʾăsîp̄ēm
GROWS FROM
אסף
Gather, collect, bring in.
“gather in” in this verse is ʾāsōp ʾăsîp̄ēm. The verb is doubled, literally “gathering I will gather them,” while the KJV renders its force as “surely consume.” The same root names the gathering of a harvest, making this a bitter ingathering: the people are gathered away while the crops yield nothing.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsîp̄: Ingathering, harvest.
אָסִיף
This word for gathering in a harvest echoes the verse’s failed crops and gives its gathering of people a grim agricultural edge.
ʾasuppāh: Assembly, collection.
אֲסֻפָּה
The same root gathers people or things into a group, connecting the people in this verse to the harvest imagery.
יַעַבְרוּם
yaʿavərūm
GROWS FROM
עבר
Cross over, pass across, pass by.
“cross over” in this verse is yaʿavərūm. The final verb gives loss a direction: what was given crosses away from them rather than simply becoming less. Beside the first verb’s gathering, the verse traces both people and possessions moving out of reach.
ALSO GROWS
maʿăvār: A passage or crossing.
מַעֲבָר
This noun makes the root’s movement across a boundary concrete, as the verse describes what was given passing beyond the people.
ʿōvēr: One who passes or crosses.
עֹבֵר
The participle keeps the root’s sense of ongoing movement alive in the verse’s description of things passing away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses fruit and leaf together as visible signs of whether a tree’s life is sustained.
And he becomes like a tree planted by the channels of the waters, that gives its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither; whatever he does, he breaks through.The vine has withered, the fig tree wilts; pomegranate, date palm, and apple, all the trees of the field, have dried up; for the leaping has withered from the children of humankind.And as they passed by early in the morning, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.THE THREAD
Gather to me my faithful ones, those who cut my covenant over the slaughtered offering.The Hebrew behind Jeremiah’s “consume” is the doubled root אסף (ʾāsap̄, “gather”); Psalm 50:5 uses that same root in “Gather my saints together.” The shared verb means collection, while the destination changes its force: Jeremiah’s people are gathered away, while the psalm’s are gathered to God.
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