What Does Jeremiah 10:5 Mean in the King James?
They are upright as the palm tree, but speak not: they must needs be borne, because they cannot go. Be not afraid of them; for they cannot do evil, neither also is it in them to do good.
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
Their uprightness is only posture: what cannot take a step has to be carried by the very people who fear it.
THE MEANING
What looms over you may look powerful, yet it cannot speak or move; it depends on the hands that carry it. The call not to fear it rests on that helplessness: it can neither harm nor help you.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that an impressive, upright thing must have power over you; the verse exposes its stature as appearance without agency.
THE ROOT
נָשֹׂא יִנָּשׂוּא
nāśōʾ yinnāśēʾ
GROWS FROM
נ-ש-א
To lift, carry, or bear.
“borne” in this verse is nāśōʾ yinnāśēʾ. The Hebrew intensifies the carrying: “carried, they are surely carried.” This root also gives a word for a burden and a phrase for bearing away crookedness; here, what appears to command fear is itself an object others must lift.
ALSO GROWS
māśśāʾ: A burden or load.
מַשָּׂא
The same root turns carrying into a burden: these figures are not bearers of power but loads others carry.
nāśāʾ ʿāwōn: To bear or take away crookedness; to forgive.
נָשָׂא עָוֹן
The root can describe bearing something away; here the striking reversal is that the idols themselves must be borne.
THE PATTERN
An image made to be revered becomes a load for its makers, while the living God gives life rather than depending on human hands.
Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary beast.They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat.Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;THE THREAD
And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.Jeremiah’s idols are carried because they cannot move; Isaiah uses the same נָשָׂא (nasa, carry) root for God carrying you through old age. The repeated root flips the image: the false power is the load, while the living source bears the person.
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