What Does Jeremiah 9:20 Mean?
Yet hear and respond to the word of the LORD, O women, and let your ear take in the word of his mouth. Teach your daughters wailing, and each woman her neighbor a lament.
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
Yet hear the word of the LORD, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbour lamentation.THE KEY
Grief here is not left private and wordless; it becomes a language one generation is told to teach another.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s word reaches the ear and is received, then passes into words of wailing shared from woman to daughter and neighbor. The verse gives grief a voice that can be taught and carried between people now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that grief must be endured alone and left unspoken dissolves here: lament is voiced, taught, and shared.
THE ROOT
וְלַמֵּדְנָה
welammednah
GROWS FROM
ל־מ־ד
L-M-D
Learn; in an intensive form, teach or train.
The Hebrew word for “teach” grows from the same root as “learn.” The verse presents lament as something received and passed on, not only as a feeling that arises privately.
ALSO GROWS
lamad: Learn, be taught.
לָמַד
The daughters are learners of a language for grief.
limmed: Teach, train.
לִמֵּד
This is the teaching form of the root, making lament something deliberately handed down.
talmid: Learner, student.
תַּלְמִיד
This branch keeps the learner visible alongside the teacher: lament moves between people.
שִׁמְעַנָּה
shim'ana
GROWS FROM
ש־מ־ע
Sh-M-A
Hear, listen, heed.
The Hebrew שָׁמַע (shama, hear and respond) can carry attention that answers, not sound merely entering the ear. In this verse, hearing the LORD’s word leads directly into teaching: what reaches the ear continues outward.
ALSO GROWS
shama: Hear, listen, heed or respond.
שָׁמַע
The verse opens with hearing that is followed by an answer: the women teach lament.
shemuah: Report, news, or message heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch connects hearing with a message that can be carried onward.
shomea: One who hears; a listener.
שֹׁמֵעַ
The listener named by this root becomes a teacher within the verse’s movement from receiving to sharing.
THE PATTERN
Grief is given voice and shared form rather than sealed inside one person.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to leap.Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.And Jeremiah wailed over Josiah, and all the singers, men and women, spoke of Josiah in their laments to this day. They gave them in Israel as a statute, and behold, they are written in the laments.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD, a voice was heard in Ramah, a wailing and a bitter weeping. Rachel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were gone.The word נְהִי (nehi, wailing) appears in both verses. Here it is taught from woman to daughter; there it rises as Rachel’s voice, showing the same lament as both a language handed on and grief spoken aloud.
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