What Does Jeremiah 2:5 Mean in the King James?
Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?
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
You do not merely follow what is empty; you become empty in its image.
THE MEANING
The verse puts a searching question before you: what wrong have you found in God that accounts for your distance? It shows that what you follow does not stay outside you, pursuing what is empty reshapes you from within.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that turning away proves God was found wanting: the verse asks what fault was actually found, then shows the emptiness in what was pursued.
THE ROOT
הֶבֶל
hevel
GROWS FROM
הבל
To be vaporous or insubstantial; something futile or empty.
“vanity / become vain” in this verse is hevel. The verse uses hevel for what is pursued, then a form of the same root for what the pursuers become. The Hebrew makes the consequence echo the object: following what is empty gives emptiness a shape within you.
ALSO GROWS
hevel: Vanity, futility, something insubstantial.
הֶבֶל
This is what the verse says they walk after.
haval: To become futile or act emptily.
הָבַל
This verb supplies the root behind “are become vain,” turning the pursued emptiness into the pursuers’ own condition.
רָחֲקוּ
raḥaqu
GROWS FROM
רחק
To be distant or move far away.
“gone far” in this verse is raḥaqu. The verse pairs distance from God with walking after something else: the direction of the walk gives the distance its shape. The root also describes what is far or removed, making separation a movement rather than a mystery.
ALSO GROWS
raḥoq: Far, distant.
רָחוֹק
It shares the root of “gone far” and makes the separation concrete.
hirḥiq: To put or move far away.
הִרְחִיק
It highlights the distance as something enacted, not merely felt.
THE PATTERN
What you follow shapes what you become.
They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed.Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.THE THREAD
Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.Ecclesiastes repeats the same Hebrew root, הבל (hevel), naming what Jeremiah’s verse shows people pursuing. Jeremiah adds the turn: what is followed as empty becomes the condition of the one who follows it.
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