What Does Jeremiah 10:17 Mean in the King James?
Gather up thy wares out of the land, O inhabitant of the fortress.
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 fortress does not cancel departure: the first act is to gather what can be carried out.
THE MEANING
The verse addresses you as someone living in a fortress and gives an immediate command: gather your goods out of the land. The stronghold does not make staying possible; what can be gathered is already being moved toward departure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a fortified place makes your possessions and your place in the land permanent.
THE ROOT
אִסְפִּי
ʾispî
GROWS FROM
אסף
To gather, collect, or bring in.
“Gather” in this verse is ʾispî. Hebrew pictures separate goods being brought into a collected whole. Here the gathering is directed out of the land, so it begins a departure; it does not promise that the fortress will preserve what has been gathered.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsaph: To gather, collect, or bring in.
אָסַף
This verb form makes explicit the gathering action carried by the command in the verse.
ʾăsēphāh: Assembly or gathering.
אֲסֵפָה
The same root can describe a gathering of people, showing how the action collects separate things into one group.
THE PATTERN
When a place of shelter becomes untenable, the word turns life and its belongings toward departure.
And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.Let him which is on the housetop not come down to take any thing out of his house:THE THREAD
Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.Both verses use אסף (ʾasaph), “gather”: Jeremiah gathers wares out of the land, while the psalm gathers people to God. The shared root makes the direction of the gathering part of its meaning.
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