What Does Jeremiah 2:32 Mean in the King James?
Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.
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
A bride remembers what she fastens to herself, yet God’s people can let their relationship with God recede for days without number.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the reader now: the things kept close and familiar can remain in view while God recedes from awareness. Its grief is not a passing lapse but forgetting that continues through many days. The comparison makes that distance visible through an ordinary, intimate image.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that belonging to God’s people makes remembrance automatic: even “my people” can forget God for days without number.
THE ROOT
שְׁכֵחוּנִי
shekhechuni
GROWS FROM
שכח
to forget or neglect
“forgotten me” in this verse is shekhechuni. The Hebrew repeats this root in the question about the young woman and in the statement that the people have forgotten God. That repetition makes the comparison exact: what seems effortless to remember can recede from awareness for days without number.
ALSO GROWS
shakach: to forget or neglect
שָׁכַח
This is the root verb behind both uses of “forget” in the verse.
nishkach: to be forgotten
נִשְׁכַּח
The passive form shows the same root describing what has slipped from remembrance.
shokhehei: those who forget
שֹׁכְחֵי
This participle describes people by the ongoing act of forgetting, matching the verse’s sense of prolonged distance.
קִשֻּׁרֶיהָ
qishureha
GROWS FROM
קשר
to bind, tie, or fasten together
The word rendered “attire” carries the sense of bands or things fastened on. The image is concrete: a bride remembers the adornments she puts on, which sharpens the contrast with God’s people forgetting their relationship with God.
ALSO GROWS
qashar: to bind or tie
קָשַׁר
This verb supplies the physical sense behind the bride’s fastened adornments.
qesher: a bond, league, or conspiracy
קֶשֶׁר
This noun extends the root’s idea of things joined together, adding depth to the verse’s image of adornment held close.
THE PATTERN
What is no longer held in view can stop shaping attention and action, even when the bond is familiar.
Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day:And I will visit upon her the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them, and she decked herself with her earrings and her jewels, and she went after her lovers, and forgat me, saith the LORD.For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.THE THREAD
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.Isaiah uses the same שָׁכַח (shakach, “forget”) root, turning Jeremiah’s image of the people forgetting God toward the assurance that God does not forget the reader. The repeated root holds human forgetting and divine remembrance in the same line of sight.
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