What Does Jeremiah 21:14 Mean in the King James?
But I will punish you according to the fruit of your doings, saith the LORD: and I will kindle a fire in the forest thereof, and it shall devour all things round about it.
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
Punishment is the LORD attending to the fruit your actions have grown, then kindling a fire whose reach surrounds its source.
THE MEANING
Your actions bear fruit, and the LORD meets you according to what they have produced. The fire consumes everything around the forest, making the reach of judgment part of the verse’s claim.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that an action ends where it happens: what it produces is met in a reckoning that reaches beyond its starting point.
THE ROOT
וּפָקַדְתִּי
u-faqadti
GROWS FROM
פקד
Attend to, visit, or reckon with; here, to punish.
The word translated “punish” carries the motion of attending to or visiting. The LORD’s response meets the fruit of what you have done as a direct reckoning.
ALSO GROWS
paqad: Attend to, visit, or muster.
פָּקַד
This branch shows judgment as the LORD’s close attention to what your actions have produced.
pequddah: Oversight, charge, or visitation.
פְּקֻדָּה
The same root can describe an entrusted charge or visitation, adding the sense of being met and accounted for.
פְּרִי
peri
GROWS FROM
פרה
Bear fruit, become fruitful, increase.
Calling the outcome of your deeds “fruit” connects what you do with what it grows. That produce becomes visible and is the measure named in the verse’s reckoning.
ALSO GROWS
parah: Bear fruit, be fruitful.
פָּרָה
The verb names the growth behind the image: deeds produce something that can be seen and met.
peri: Fruit or produce.
פְּרִי
This is the word used in the verse, making the result of your actions their grown outcome.
THE PATTERN
What actions produce becomes the measure of their reckoning.
I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.THE THREAD
I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.Jeremiah 17:10 repeats the phrase “according to the fruit of his doings,” using the same Hebrew words for fruit and deeds. It names the heart as what the LORD searches, opening the fire in Jeremiah 21:14 as an image of judgment reaching what a life has brought into view.
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