What Does Jeremiah 8:14 Mean?
Why do we sit? Gather yourselves, and let us go into the walled cities, and let us be silenced there; for the LORD our God has silenced us, and has given us waters of gall to drink, because we have missed the mark against the LORD.
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
Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities, and let us be silent there: for the LORD our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against the LORD.THE KEY
The people seek silence as shelter, only to discover that silence has already become the judgment and the drink is bitter.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment a people reaches for walls and quiet while the consequences are already inside the refuge. The repeated silence turns the plea into recognition: the LORD has silenced them, and they name the bitter drink as the cost of their missing against him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that strong walls can put a people beyond the consequences of what they have done.
THE ROOT
דָּמַם
damam
GROWS FROM
דמם
damam
Be still, be silent, cease.
“silenced” in this verse is damam. English gives you two silences: the people’s plan to be quiet in the city and the LORD’s act of silencing them. Both Hebrew verbs grow from דמם (damam, be still or silent), folding the sought hush and the imposed hush into one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
dumiyyah: Silence, stillness; quiet waiting.
דּוּמִיָּה
This is the word behind “waiteth” in Psalm 62:1, showing that this root’s silence can also hold waiting upon God.
demamah: Silence, hush, stillness.
דְּמָמָה
The same family can name a hush as well as the act of becoming silent, giving the repeated silence here a wider range than mere absence of speech.
חָטָאנוּ
chatanu
GROWS FROM
חטא
chata'
Miss, err, fail to hit the mark.
“missed the mark” in this verse is chatanu. The root adds the image of missing the mark beneath the speaker’s direct confession against the LORD. It deepens the familiar word without canceling the force of the confession.
ALSO GROWS
chet: Missing, offense.
חֵטְא
This noun carries the same image of missing into the speaker’s acknowledgment of what has gone wrong.
chatta't: Missing or offense; in other contexts, a sin offering.
חַטָּאת
The same word-family can name the missing and, in other passages, an offering associated with it.
THE PATTERN
What turns a people away from the LORD can take root as bitterness, become their portion, and spread beyond the person who first bears it.
Lest there be among you a man or a woman, a family or a tribe, whose heart turns away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations. Lest there be among you a root bearing poison and wormwood.Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel. Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them waters of gall to drink.Keeping watch, lest any fall short of the favor of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up crowd you, and through it the many be stained.THE THREAD
To the chief Musician, to Jeduthun, A Psalm of David. Only toward God is my living soul hushed. From him comes my deliverance.The Hebrew behind “waiteth” is דּוּמִיָּה (dumiyyah, silence or stillness), from דמם (damam, be still or silent), the same root behind both silences in Jeremiah. Here the shared root turns toward quiet waiting on God, revealing its range without erasing the bitterness of Jeremiah’s scene.
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