What Does Jeremiah 22:14 Mean in the King James?
That saith, I will build me a wide house and large chambers, and cutteth him out windows; and it is cieled with cedar, and painted with vermilion.
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 word for these spacious chambers can also mean relief, but here the room is designed for one man’s display.
THE MEANING
The verse gives language to an ambition that is still recognizable: to make oneself a grand home, tailoring every surface to comfort and display. The repeated self-reference centers the project on its owner, while the surrounding line names the worker whose wages are withheld to build that comfort. The house’s size is visible; the question of whose life gets more room remains.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A beautiful, spacious house does not prove its builder lives in wholeness; its comfort may rest on another person’s deprivation.
THE ROOT
מְרֻוָּחִים
meruvachim
GROWS FROM
רווח
To have room; spaciousness, relief.
“spacious” in this verse is meruvachim. The word for the chambers grows from רווח, which can name having room and relief. The same root appears in Esther’s “enlargement,” so the verse raises a quiet question: whose life gets more room, the builder’s, or the people whose labor makes the house possible?
ALSO GROWS
ravach: To have room or be relieved.
רָוַח
This verb holds spatial openness and relief together, showing that spaciousness can mean more than a large interior.
revach: Room, relief, enlargement.
רֶוַח
In Esther 4:14, this noun is rendered “enlargement”; there, room opens for a threatened people, while Jeremiah describes it enclosed in private chambers.
אֶבְנֶה
evneh
GROWS FROM
בנה
To build, establish, or build up.
The verb is first-person: “I will build for myself.” This root can also describe a household being established, making the contrast sharper: the verse dwells on the crafted structure, while its surrounding line exposes the human cost beneath it.
ALSO GROWS
binyan: A building or structure.
בִּנְיָן
This branch names the constructed thing that fills the verse: a house shaped for its owner’s comfort and display.
ibbaneh: “Be built up,” used of establishing a family through children in Genesis 16:2.
אִבָּנֶה
The root can describe forming a household, not only raising a structure; that wider sense makes this verse’s focus on the house’s surfaces stand out.
THE PATTERN
Scripture exposes private splendor built by withholding another person’s due as injustice rather than wholeness.
Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour’s service without wages, and giveth him not for his work;Forasmuch therefore as your treading is upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat: ye have built houses of hewn stone, but ye shall not dwell in them; ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them.Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth.THE THREAD
For if thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place; but thou and thy father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?Jeremiah’s “spacious” chambers and Esther’s “enlargement” draw on the root רווח, which carries the sense of room and relief. In Esther, that room opens for a threatened people; here, it is designed around one man’s private comfort.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us