What Does Jeremiah 10:11 Mean in the King James?
Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, even they shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens.
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
What cannot make the heavens cannot outlast the earth.
THE MEANING
Every power that claims ultimacy exists within a world it did not make. Its apparent permanence cannot change that it depends on what it cannot create. The verse places its end inside the very earth it could never bring into being.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a power becomes ultimate because it commands awe or receives devotion. The verse measures it by whether it can make and endure, not by how imposing it appears.
THE ROOT
יֵאבַדוּ
yēʾbadû
GROWS FROM
אבד
Be lost; perish.
The Aramaic verb for “perish” shares the אבד root with Hebrew words for being lost and destruction. The end here is loss of existence, not merely loss of status.
ALSO GROWS
ʾābad: Be lost; perish.
אָבַד
The root holds perishing as loss, as something that no longer remains.
destruction: Destruction; ruin.
אֲבַדּוֹן
This noun gives the root’s sense of loss a stark form: the made gods end in ruin.
עֲבַדוּ
ʿăbadû
GROWS FROM
עבד
Do, make, work.
The Aramaic word for “made” comes from עבד, a root also used in Hebrew for work and service. It nearly echoes “perish” (יֵאבַדוּ, yēʾbadû), though the roots differ: עבד for making, אבד for being lost. The sound draws the reversal close: what is made is also lost.
ALSO GROWS
serve: Serve; work.
עָבַד
The same consonants connect making with performed work and service, activity belonging to a creature, not the power it claims.
ʿăvōdāh: Work; service.
עֲבוֹדָה
This branch makes the root’s active, performed quality clear: these gods are made things within the world.
THE PATTERN
A made thing cannot bear the place of the Maker; what receives ultimate allegiance without authorship proves empty.
For all the gods of the nations are idols: but the LORD made the heavens.They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.THE THREAD
But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.“Perish” here comes from the Hebrew אבד (ʾ-b-d) root, the same root as the Aramaic verb in Jeremiah. Both verses picture what opposes the LORD as lost and consumed, unable to secure its own permanence.
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