What Does Jeremiah 16:10 Mean in the King James?
And it shall come to pass, when thou shalt shew this people all these words, and they shall say unto thee, Wherefore hath the LORD pronounced all this great evil against us? or what is our iniquity? or what is our sin that we have committed against the LORD our God?
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 question about “our sin” shares its root with “we have committed,” binding the name of the missing to the act itself.
THE MEANING
You stand under a declaration of “great evil” and ask what crookedness and missing you have committed against the LORD your God. The verse holds the severity of what is spoken beside the searching question about your own action, without answering that question for you.
THE ROOT
חַטָּאתֵנוּ
ḥaṭṭāʾtēnû
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss, to miss the mark.
The people ask מַה חַטָּאתֵנוּ (mah ḥaṭṭāʾtēnû, “what is our sin or missing?”) and then אֲשֶׁר חָטָאנוּ (ʾasher ḥāṭāʾnû, “that we have sinned or missed”). The noun and verb share חטא, so the question turns from naming the missing to seeing the act as missing.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, to sin.
חָטָא
This verb appears in the verse as חָטָאנוּ (ḥāṭāʾnû, “we have sinned”); the question’s noun and the people’s action grow from the same root.
ḥōṭēʾ: One who sins, a sinner.
חֹטֵא
This form names the person through the same root, joining the act of missing to the one who does it.
דִּבֶּר
dibber
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak; a word or matter spoken.
“pronounced” in this verse is dibber. The verse first says הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה (had-deḇārîm hāʾēlleh, “these words”), then says דִּבֶּר (dibber, “he spoke”). Both forms share דבר: the words the people hear and the act of speaking are held together in Hebrew.
ALSO GROWS
dāḇār: A word, matter, or thing.
דָּבָר
This noun shares דבר with “he spoke,” showing that speech can also be named as a word or matter.
dəḇārîm: Words or matters.
דְּבָרִים
This plural form appears earlier in the verse as “these words,” linking the people’s question to the speech they have just heard.
THE PATTERN
A people’s question about harm opens into a search of the path they have taken.
And it shall come to pass, when ye shall say, Wherefore doeth the LORD our God all these things unto us? then shalt thou answer them, Like as ye have forsaken me, and served strange gods in your land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land that is not yours.Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the LORD.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
O LORD, though our iniquities testify against us, do thou it for thy name’s sake: for our backslidings are many; we have sinned against thee.The verb חָטָאנוּ (ḥāṭāʾnû, “we have sinned or missed”) shares the root חטא with חַטָּאתֵנוּ (ḥaṭṭāʾtēnû, “our sin or missing”) in this verse. The same communal “we” moves from asking what the missing is to naming that they have missed against the LORD.
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