What Does Jeremiah 15:12 Mean in the King James?
Shall iron break the northern iron and the steel?
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
Iron meeting iron does not mean that anything must break; strength can meet strength and hold.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you under pressure: the force coming against you is not the only strength in the encounter. Its question pictures iron facing iron and bronze, asking whether one hard force can shatter another. The pressure is real, but its force alone does not decide the outcome.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the harder the opposition feels, the more certain your breaking becomes. Force alone does not prove it can shatter what stands against it.
THE ROOT
יַרֹעַ
yārōaʿ
GROWS FROM
רעע
r-ʿ-ʿ
To break or shatter; also to do harm.
“break” in this verse is yārōaʿ. The verb for breaking shares its root with words for harm and evil. English presents a physical collision, while the Hebrew root carries the possibility of damage within the same word-family.
ALSO GROWS
raʿ: Bad, evil, or harmful.
רַע
This branch links the idea of harm to the verse’s image of breaking.
hēraʿ: To act harmfully or do harm.
הֵרֵעַ
The root reaches beyond physical shattering to harm more broadly, making the verse’s force feel active and consequential.
צָפוֹן
ṣāfōn
GROWS FROM
צפן
ṣ-p-n
To hide, conceal, or store away.
“northern” in this verse is ṣāfōn. The Hebrew word for north shares its root with hiding or storing something away. The phrase joins the visible hardness of iron with a direction whose name carries the sense of what is concealed.
ALSO GROWS
tsāphan: To conceal or lay something up.
צָפַן
This is the verb sharing the seed of the word for north, adding the sense of concealment to the phrase.
ṣāfūn: Something concealed or treasured up.
צָפוּן
This related form makes the hidden quality of the root visible in a word, showing what the directional term carries underneath.
THE PATTERN
What is made firm can withstand forces that would otherwise break it.
For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land.As an adamant harder than flint have I made thy forehead: fear them not, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they be a rebellious house.And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.THE THREAD
For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land.Here, the person facing opposition is described as an iron pillar and bronze walls, with the forces against them failing to prevail. Jeremiah 15:12 opens that same image as a question: can iron break what has been made to withstand it?
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