What Does Jeremiah 2:25 Mean in the King James?
Withhold thy foot from being unshod, and thy throat from thirst: but thou saidst, There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers, and after them will I go.
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
“There is no hope” stands beside “after them will I go”: despair does not stop desire from choosing a direction.
THE MEANING
Your throat can be thirsty while your feet keep following what you love. This verse places a claim of hopelessness beside a deliberate future: “after them will I go.” Desire can keep directing you even when hope feels gone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that hopelessness means you have no direction or desire left: the words “there is no hope” are followed by “I will go.”
THE ROOT
נוֹאָשׁ
no'ash
GROWS FROM
יאש
y-ʾ-š
to despair, give up hope
“no hope” in this verse is no'ash. The word names despair, yet the sentence continues with a chosen course: “after them will I go.” The root makes the tension plain, feeling hopeless and being moved by desire can exist together.
ALSO GROWS
ye'ush: despair, loss of hope
יֵאוּשׁ
This noun makes explicit the despair carried by the verse’s declaration of hopelessness.
ya'ash: to despair, give up hope
יָאַשׁ
The verb form shows that hopelessness is expressed as a state of giving up, even as the speaker still names where they will go.
אֵלֵךְ
'elekh
GROWS FROM
הלך
h-l-k
to walk, go
This is the same root used for ordinary walking and going. Set beside the foot that is at risk of going bare, “I will go after them” makes the body’s route part of the verse’s picture of attachment.
ALSO GROWS
halakh: to walk, go
הָלַךְ
This basic form holds both physical movement and going somewhere, the movement stated directly in the verse.
halikhah: walking, going
הֲלִיכָה
This noun keeps the sense of movement visible and echoes the verse’s focus on the foot and the chosen path.
צִמְאָה
tsim'ah
GROWS FROM
צמא
ṣ-m-ʾ
to thirst, be thirsty
The root names bodily thirst and also appears in words for thirst and drought. The image of a thirsty throat therefore opens onto the question of what the thirst is reaching toward, a connection made vivid in Psalm 63:1.
ALSO GROWS
tsame: thirsty
צָמֵא
This adjective describes a person who feels thirst, giving the verse’s image a human, bodily presence.
tsimma'on: thirst, drought
צִמָּאוֹן
This noun joins thirst with the absence of water, deepening the verse’s image of a need that can remain unmet.
THE PATTERN
Unanswered thirst keeps seeking a source, and the source it follows shapes whether the thirst remains.
For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah. O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;The Hebrew root צמא (ṣ-m-ʾ), meaning “to thirst,” appears in both verses. Jeremiah names thirst alongside the pursuit of strangers; Psalm 63 directs that same thirst toward God, showing how much depends on where the longing is pointed.
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