What Does Jeremiah 26:22 Mean in the King James?
And Jehoiakim the king sent men into Egypt, namely, Elnathan the son of Achbor, and certain men with him into Egypt.
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 Hebrew word for “sent” holds both dispatch and release, placing a king’s power to send men beside the possibility of letting a person go.
THE MEANING
You see how a command travels through other people: the king’s will becomes named agents crossing into Egypt to bring a man back within his reach. Distance does not dissolve the reach of power; even beyond a border, someone can remain exposed to it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that crossing a ruler’s border automatically makes a person safe from his reach.
THE ROOT
וַיִּשְׁלַח
wayyishlach
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send out, release, or let go.
“sent” in this verse is wayyishlach. Here the king sends agents to close the distance and bring a man back; elsewhere this same root names release, as in the demand “Let my people go.” English separates pursuit from release, while שָׁלַח (shalach, to send or release) holds both movements together.
ALSO GROWS
leshalleach: To send away, release, or let go.
לְשַׁלֵּחַ
This branch makes the word’s double edge visible: sending can extend a ruler’s reach, or open the way for someone to leave.
Shiloach: Sent forth; the name associated with Siloam’s waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The same sending can carry restoration when what is sent is water, rather than agents pursuing a person.
shulchan: Table; provision extended outward.
שֻׁלְחָן
The outward reach can also provide: a table extends food toward someone rather than power toward them.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צרר
To bind, press in, or constrain; through צַר (tsar, narrow), the image is of being brought into a strait.
Mitzrayim, the name for Egypt, carries the image of narrowness, with its -ayim ending echoing two narrows. The verse names a place and also evokes constriction: the king’s reach follows the man into the narrow place.
ALSO GROWS
metsar: A narrow place, strait, or constriction.
מֵצַר
This branch lets Egypt resonate as a place of narrowed space, where pursuit presses in.
tsarah: Distress or trouble.
צָרָה
The root’s sense of constriction reaches beyond geography into the distress of being caught within another’s power.
THE PATTERN
Power turns distance into pursuit when it treats a person’s life as something it can seize or silence.
And they fetched forth Urijah out of Egypt, and brought him unto Jehoiakim the king; who slew him with the sword, and cast his dead body into the graves of the common people.Saul also sent messengers unto David’s house, to watch him, and to slay him in the morning: and Michal David’s wife told him, saying, If thou save not thy life to night, to morrow thou shalt be slain.And immediately the king sent an executioner, and commanded his head to be brought: and he went and beheaded him in the prison,THE THREAD
And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.The same Hebrew root שָׁלַח (shalach, to send or release) is behind “sent” here and “let … go” in Exodus. Here agents are sent into Mitzrayim to bring a man back within royal reach; Exodus uses that root in a demand for release, showing how sending can either tighten a hold or open a way out.
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