What Does Jeremiah 16:20 Mean in the King James?
Shall a man make gods unto himself, and they are no gods?
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 ground-born human can shape something called a god, but naming a handmade thing divine does not make it divine.
THE MEANING
The question exposes a present contradiction: a human makes a thing and then gives it a power and nature it does not possess. What is made remains a made thing, however sacred its name becomes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The false belief that human making or naming can confer true divinity on an object.
THE ROOT
אָדָם
adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
Red or earth-colored; the root links the human word adam with the ground word adamah.
The word translated “man” is adam, sharing its consonants with adamah, ground. The question places this ground-being in the role of making gods, exposing the gap between shaping something from the ground and giving it divine nature.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
The shared root links the human maker to the ground from which human life is named.
adom: red
אָדוֹם
This branch preserves the root’s reddish, earth-colored sense, another shade carried by the word adam.
יַעֲשֶׂה
ya'aseh
GROWS FROM
עשה
ʿasah
To do, make, or accomplish.
“make” in this verse is ya'aseh. The verse turns on what a human does: making an object does not give it an independent nature beyond its maker. The root keeps the act of making visible beneath the claim that the result is a god.
ALSO GROWS
ma'aseh: deed, work
מַעֲשֶׂה
It names the product or work of an action, keeping the supposed god within the category of something made.
asiyah: making, action
עֲשִׂיָּה
This form keeps the root’s sense of an act of making, the human action at the center of the question.
THE PATTERN
A thing fashioned by human hands cannot become the independent source of power its maker assigns to it.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god.Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.THE THREAD
And the residue thereof he maketh a god, even his graven image: he falleth down unto it, and worshippeth it, and prayeth unto it, and saith, Deliver me; for thou art my god.“Maketh” comes from the same Hebrew root עשה (ʿasah), “to make,” as Jeremiah’s question. Isaiah carries the contradiction one step further: the maker asks the work of his own hands to deliver him.
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