What Does Jeremiah 1:2 Mean in the King James?
To whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The Hebrew frames the LORD’s word not just as a message that travels to Jeremiah, but as speech that becomes a lived matter in his days.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s word enters a real human timeline: this verse names a person, a king, and a specific year. The word reaches you within the days you inhabit, not in a separate sacred time; it can become present amid the actual life unfolding around you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the word is only an idea about God, detached from a person’s life. Here it arrives as an event within the days Jeremiah is living.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
dābār
GROWS FROM
ד־ב־ר
d-b-r
To speak; in the noun, speech, matter, or affair.
English “word” can sound like a message alone, but this Hebrew noun also means a matter or affair, while its related verb means to speak. The LORD’s speech is thus held together with the concrete matter of Jeremiah’s life.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The verb shares the noun’s root, showing the word as active speech, not merely information.
davar: A matter, affair, or thing.
דָּבָר
This sense lets the LORD’s word be heard as a reality entering Jeremiah’s days, as well as something spoken.
הָיָה
hāyâ
GROWS FROM
ה־י־ה
h-y-h
To be, become, or happen.
The Hebrew verb can mean “was” or “came to be,” adding the sense of being and becoming to the arrival expressed in English. The word’s coming is also its becoming present within Jeremiah’s lived time.
ALSO GROWS
yihyeh: He or it will be; will become.
יִהְיֶה
This form keeps becoming in view alongside arrival: the word is present and takes form in a life.
lihyot: To be.
לִהְיוֹת
The infinitive returns the verse’s arrival verb to its root sense of being.
THE PATTERN
The word becomes present to a person in time and takes effect within the one who receives it.
After these things the word of the LORD came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord GOD hath spoken, who can but prophesy?THE THREAD
The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord GOD hath spoken, who can but prophesy?Jeremiah’s word is דָּבָר (dābār, “word”); Amos’s “hath spoken” is דִּבֵּר (dibber), from the same ד־ב־ר (d-b-r) root. The shared root reveals the movement from the word becoming present within a person to speech coming through that person.
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