What Does Jeremiah 23:29 Mean in the King James?
Is not my word like as a fire? saith the LORD; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
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 is not merely a message about what is hard; it reaches and breaks what is hard.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s word meets you now as fire and as a hammer against rock: it exposes what cannot remain and fractures what has hardened. The word is not distant information; it is an active utterance whose effect reaches into the solid places of your life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what has hardened in you is beyond reach is undone here: the verse gives the word force enough to break rock.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
d-b-r
To speak or utter; the noun carries the senses of word, matter, thing, or affair.
Davar holds spoken word and matter or thing within one word-family: the utterance is not detached from what it addresses. Here, the fire and hammer show that the word acts upon what is hard; it does not merely describe it.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: Spoke; uttered.
דִּבֵּר
This verb names the act behind the word: what is spoken is an active utterance, not inert information.
dibbur: Speech; speaking.
דִּבּוּר
This branch keeps the focus on speech itself, linking the word’s force in the verse to the act of uttering it.
THE PATTERN
The voice of God is not inert speech; it acts upon what it addresses.
The voice of the LORD divideth the flames of fire.So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.THE THREAD
So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.Isaiah uses the same Hebrew word, דָּבָר (davar, “word” or “matter”), for the word that goes out and accomplishes what it is sent to do. Jeremiah’s fire and hammer reveal how that accomplishment meets hardness: it burns and breaks through.
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