What Does Jeremiah 8:19 Mean?
Look, the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people, from a far-off land. Is the LORD not in Zion? Is her king not in her? Why have they provoked me with their hewn images, with the vapors of foreigners?
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
Behold the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people because of them that dwell in a far country: Is not the LORD in Zion? is not her king in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with strange vanities?THE KEY
The cry asks whether the LORD is present in Zion while the verse names the people’s substitutes as vapor: longing for God and trust in emptiness coexist.
THE MEANING
The reader hears a cry asking whether the LORD is still in Zion beside the LORD’s question about the carved images and foreign vanities that provoke him. The ache of distance and the fracture of trust stand together in the verse, without being smoothed over.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that asking whether God is near makes divided trust disappear.
THE ROOT
הַבְלֵי נֵכָר
hablei nekar
GROWS FROM
הבל
havel
Vapor: something fleeting and insubstantial; the noun can mean vapor or vanity.
“vapors” in this verse is hablei nekar. The phrase names the foreign vanities as vapor, things that cannot hold the weight placed on them. The cry for the LORD’s presence sits beside reliance on what the verse calls insubstantial.
ALSO GROWS
hevel: Vapor; vanity.
הֶבֶל
This noun gives the verse’s “vanities” its image of something fleeting and insubstantial.
haval: To become vain or futile.
הָבַל
This verbal form echoes Jeremiah’s description of people becoming like what they pursue in Jeremiah 2:5.
פְּסִילֵיהֶם
pesileihem
GROWS FROM
פסל
pasal
To hew or carve; to shape something by cutting.
“hewn images” in this verse is pesileihem. The Hebrew word points to something cut and shaped by human hands. Beside the vapor language, the verse sets a tangible carved object against the emptiness it represents.
ALSO GROWS
pasal: To hew or carve.
פָּסַל
The verb names the act of making the graven forms mentioned in the verse.
pesel: A carved image or idol.
פֶּסֶל
This noun names the carved object itself, linking the verse’s accusation to a made thing treated as a rival presence.
THE PATTERN
A carved substitute cannot answer or sustain its worshipers, and trust in it draws them toward its emptiness.
Those who shape a hewn image are all a formless waste, and the things they desire will not profit. They are their own witnesses. They do not see, nor know, so that they will be ashamed.Those who make them are like them, everyone who leans on them.So then, as touching the eating of what is slaughtered for idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD, What crookedness did your fathers find in me, that they went far from me, and walked after vapor, and became vapor?Jeremiah 2:5 uses the same word הֶבֶל (hevel, vapor or vanity), and says that those who follow it become vain. Here, the vapor is named among the things chosen alongside carved images, tying what is pursued to what the pursuer becomes.
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