What Does Jeremiah 13:23 Mean in the King James?
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.
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 verse compares evil habit to unchangeable markings, yet calls that habit learned.
THE MEANING
The Ethiopian’s skin and the leopard’s spots stand for what cannot be changed by sheer will. Beside them, the verse places a person so trained in evil that doing good seems just as impossible. It speaks to the reader about how deeply a practiced way can shape what feels possible now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It unsettles the belief that a destructive way is simply an unchangeable nature: the verse calls it learned, even as it shows how firmly that learning can take hold.
THE ROOT
לִמֻּדֵי
limmudei
GROWS FROM
למד
L-M-D
to learn, teach, or train
The word translated “accustomed” carries the sense of being trained or taught in evil. English can make the condition sound like a fixed kind of person; the Hebrew points to a way learned so deeply that it now feels fixed, like skin or spots.
ALSO GROWS
lamad: to learn or be taught
לָמַד
The verb makes learning the hidden process beneath the person’s present way of acting.
limmud: one who is taught or trained
לִמּוּד
This related form echoes the verse’s description of people shaped by repeated practice.
talmid: student or disciple
תַּלְמִיד
This later Hebrew branch preserves the root’s sense of a person formed through learning.
THE PATTERN
Repeated practice trains perception and action until a way feels natural.
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.THE THREAD
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.Jeremiah uses the same root, למד (lamad, “learn” or “be taught”), in “Learn not the way.” That shared root opens “accustomed” as a learned way of life: deeply ingrained, yet described through the language of training.
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