What Does Jeremiah 17:1 Mean in the King James?
The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, and with the point of a diamond: it is graven upon the table of their heart, and upon the horns of your altars;
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 same miss is cut into both the heart and the altar, so inward life and outward worship bear one inscription.
THE MEANING
The verse shows a pattern alive now: the same missing is engraved in the heart and expressed at the altar. Iron and diamond make the mark feel deep and enduring, reaching into what is held inwardly and what is offered outwardly.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that inward patterns and outward worship can be kept separate.
THE ROOT
חַטַּאת
ḥaṭṭāʾt
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss; to miss the mark.
The word carries the sense of a miss inside what English calls sin. Here that miss is pictured as an inscription, joining the heart and the altar in one visible pattern.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, err, or sin.
חָטָא
The verb lets the noun retain the sense of a course gone off its mark.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: A missing or sin; also an offering for the missing.
חַטָּאת
The same word family holds both the miss and the offering associated with it.
חֲרוּשָׁה
ḥărûšāh
GROWS FROM
חרש
To cut or engrave; also to plow.
“graven” in this verse is ḥărûšāh. The verb family speaks both of cutting into material and of plowing a furrow. The heart’s tablet therefore bears a track cut into it, not a passing thought.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāraš: To engrave, cut in, or plow.
חָרַשׁ
Its sense of plowing evokes a furrow pressed into the heart’s surface.
ḥārāš: A craftsman who works material.
חָרָשׁ
The related noun brings out the skilled, physical work implied by an inscription cut into a hard surface.
THE PATTERN
What is inscribed inwardly shapes the person and becomes legible in what they carry outwardly.
Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.THE THREAD
Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.The word translated “sin” in both verses comes from חטא (ḥṭʾ), meaning to miss. Jeremiah pictures the miss engraved into the heart; Psalm 51 brings that same word into the language of washing and cleansing, so the inscription is not the last word.
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