What Does Jeremiah 13:24 Mean in the King James?
Therefore will I scatter them as the stubble that passeth away by the wind of the wilderness.
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 wilderness wind is רוּחַ (ruach, wind/breath/spirit), the same Hebrew word that also means breath.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now of being scattered like dry stubble under a wilderness wind, carried from the place where you stood. It leaves the image severe: the wind bears the stubble away.
THE ROOT
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
ר־ו־ח
r-w-ḥ
Wind or moving air; the same word also means breath and spirit.
English gives the force a weather-name, “wind,” but רוּחַ (ruach, wind/breath/spirit) is also used for breath and spirit. The wilderness wind that carries the stubble is named with the same Hebrew word that names breath; these are not separate words.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Breath; another meaning of the same Hebrew word.
רוּחַ
The wind that carries the stubble shares its word with breath, joining dispersal and breath in the verse’s language.
ruach: Spirit; another meaning of the same Hebrew word.
רוּחַ
English divides what Hebrew holds in one word, so “wind” here echoes a word translated “spirit” elsewhere.
פּוּץ
pûts
GROWS FROM
פ־ו־ץ
p-w-ts
To scatter, disperse, or spread out.
“scatter” in this verse is pûts. The verb names an act that spreads people out from their place. The stubble image makes that scattering something done to them by the wind, not a chosen journey.
ALSO GROWS
wayyāfeṣ: He scattered them.
וַיָּפֶץ
The same root describes people being dispersed, showing the movement from the act of scattering to its human result.
nāfūts: We will be scattered.
נָפוּץ
Here the same root names the condition of dispersion, echoing the loss of place in Jeremiah’s image.
THE PATTERN
The image of chaff marks what cannot remain with the grain: it is carried off by wind or separated from what is gathered.
They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carrieth away.The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.THE THREAD
And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.“Spirit” in Genesis and “wind” in Jeremiah translate the same Hebrew word, רוּחַ (ruach, wind/breath/spirit). English separates the movement over the waters from the wilderness force that scatters the stubble; the Hebrew keeps one word at the center of both scenes.
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