What Does Jeremiah 16:12 Mean in the King James?
And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me:
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 heart’s chosen direction can keep itself moving by closing itself to the voice that could turn it.
THE MEANING
When your inward insistence sets your direction, it can also narrow what you are willing to hear from God. The verse names a deepening harm: desire becomes a path, and the path keeps its course by closing the ear to correction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that strong inward conviction proves a direction is sound. This verse shows how desire can harden into a path by making you unwilling to hear.
THE ROOT
שְׁמֹעַ
shĕmōaʿ
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, listen, or heed, to receive a voice and respond.
The verse’s “not hearken” is more than failing to catch a sound: שמע carries hearing that receives and responds. Its branches name both the call to hear and a report that is heard, so the passage’s hinge is whether a voice is admitted as something that can redirect your path.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear; listen and respond.
שְׁמַע
This imperative form shares the verse’s root and makes clear that hearing can include a response.
shemuʿah: A report or tidings; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch shows the same root extending from the act of hearing to the message received.
THE PATTERN
When inward desire determines direction, it also filters which voice gets heard.
But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear.For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.THE THREAD
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;Jeremiah’s “hearken” and Genesis’s “hearkened” use the same root, שמע (shamaʿ, hear and respond). Genesis makes the hearing-choice concrete: a voice is received, and that hearing becomes action with consequence.
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