What Does Jeremiah 17:3 Mean in the King James?
O my mountain in the field, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures to the spoil, and thy high places for sin, throughout all thy borders.
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 verse turns a mountain’s stored strength into plunder, while naming its elevated places as sites of missing.
THE MEANING
You are confronted with the strength and stored treasures of what is called “my mountain in the field” being handed over as plunder. Its high places are named in relation to missing, and the exposure reaches every border. Elevation, wealth, and belonging do not make a place untouchable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that what is elevated and richly stored cannot be taken.
THE ROOT
לָבַז
lāḇaz
GROWS FROM
בזז
To plunder or seize as spoil.
The word translated “spoil” names a transfer through seizure, not merely a loss. What the verse calls substance and treasure becomes what another can carry away.
ALSO GROWS
bizzāh: Spoil, plunder.
בִּזָּה
This noun makes the transfer tangible: possessions become what a plunderer takes.
bāzaz: To plunder, seize.
בָּזַז
The verb shows the force behind “spoil”: someone takes what had been held.
חֵילְךָ
ḥēyləḵā
GROWS FROM
חיל
Strength, force, or capacity; by extension, wealth and resources.
The word rendered “substance” can carry both material wealth and strength. The verse exposes the amassed capacity itself to seizure, so possessions do not stand apart from power.
ALSO GROWS
ḥayil: Strength, wealth, or resources.
חַיִל
This sense shows that “substance” includes accumulated capacity, not just objects.
ḥēyl: Force, host, or army.
חֵיל
The same consonants can name organized force, deepening the sense of what the verse hands over.
חַטָּאת
ḥaṭṭāʾt
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss, err, or go wrong.
The KJV word “sin” carries the root sense of missing or going wrong. Here that word is attached to the high places, locating the verse’s charge in what happens there rather than leaving it as an abstract label.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāṭāʾ: To miss, err, or sin.
חָטָא
The verb opens “sin” back to the concrete sense of missing.
ḥaṭṭāʾt: Missing, offense, or sin.
חַטָּאת
This is the word family behind the verse’s phrase about high places and sin.
THE PATTERN
Stored wealth remains exposed to loss, seizure, and decay, so possession cannot guarantee safety.
Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.THE THREAD
For the transgression of Jacob is all this, and for the sins of the house of Israel. What is the transgression of Jacob? is it not Samaria? and what are the high places of Judah? are they not Jerusalem?Micah uses בָּמוֹת (bamot, “high places”) and חַטֹּאות (ḥaṭṭōʾt, “sins”), echoing Jeremiah’s high places and the חַטָּאת (ḥaṭṭāʾt, “missing”) attached to them. The shared wording sharpens Jeremiah’s charge: these heights are bound to the passage’s naming of missing.
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