What Does Jeremiah 9:15 Mean?
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.
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
Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.THE KEY
Judgment enters through the same mouth that receives nourishment: bitterness becomes food and drink.
THE MEANING
Here, the LORD’s judgment reaches this people through food and drink: wormwood is what they are fed, and water of gall what they are given. Suffering enters through the very things that ordinarily sustain a body.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that judgment stays outside ordinary necessities: here, even food and water carry it.
THE ROOT
מַאֲכִילָם
maʾakhilam
GROWS FROM
אכל
Eat, consume, take food.
“feed them” in this verse is maʾakhilam. The Hebrew frames this as making them eat, using the same root that names ordinary food. Wormwood occupies the place of nourishment: the bitter thing is not merely tasted but made into a ration.
ALSO GROWS
ʾokhel: Food, nourishment.
אֹכֶל
This form shares the root of “feed,” making the contrast between food and wormwood part of the word’s own structure.
maʾakhal: Food, something eaten.
מַאֲכָל
The same root names what is consumed; here, what they consume is the bitterness given to them.
וְהִשְׁקִיתִים
ve-hishqitim
GROWS FROM
שקה
Give a drink; water or irrigate.
“give them to drink” in this verse is ve-hishqitim. This root can describe giving drink and watering land. Paired with the root for eating, it gives the poison the full shape of provision: what enters as food and what enters as drink.
ALSO GROWS
mashqeh: A drink or beverage; also a cupbearer.
מַשְׁקֶה
The root can name both what is served and the one who supplies it, sharpening the verse’s image of bitter water deliberately given.
hashqayah: Watering or irrigation.
הַשְׁקָיָה
The same root describes supplying water to land; here, that supplying action reaches the people through water of gall.
THE PATTERN
When bitterness enters as food or drink, what should sustain life becomes the means through which harm is received.
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.They put a bitter root in my food, and for my thirst they give me vinegar to drink.And the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters becomes wormwood, and many among humankind die from the waters, because they are made bitter.THE THREAD
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.Deuteronomy names the same pair, gall and wormwood, as fruit borne by a root among the people. Jeremiah gives that bitterness as food and water, bringing the root’s yield directly into what sustains them.
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