What Does Jeremiah 26:9 Mean in the King James?
Why hast thou prophesied in the name of the LORD, saying, This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate without an inhabitant? And all the people were gathered against Jeremiah in the house of the LORD.
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 warning spoken in the LORD’s nature exposes the limit of sacred identity: a house can bear the name while the crowd inside gathers against the warning.
THE MEANING
A sacred place does not become untouchable because it bears the LORD’s name: the house can remain while the city is named as becoming a ruin without anyone dwelling there. The crowd gathered inside that house turns against the voice speaking in the LORD’s name.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that sacred walls or a religious crowd automatically guarantee safety or truth.
THE ROOT
חָרְבָּה
chorbah
GROWS FROM
חרב
charav
Become dry, waste, or ruined.
“desolate” in this verse is chorbah. The city is named as becoming a waste, stripped down to what remains when settled life is gone. The word binds its threatened ruin to the next image: no one dwelling there.
ALSO GROWS
charav: Become dry or desolate.
חָרַב
This form names the city’s threatened condition: it becomes waste.
hecheriv: Lay waste; destroy.
הֶחֱרִיב
The related causative form makes ruin an action that can be done to a place.
יֹשֵׁב
yoshev
GROWS FROM
ישב
yashav
Sit, dwell, or remain settled.
The word for an inhabitant carries the sense of one who sits or settles in a place. So the city’s desolation is not only damaged buildings; it is the loss of anyone remaining to dwell there.
ALSO GROWS
yashav: Sit; dwell; remain.
יָשַׁב
The root holds physical sitting together with staying in a place.
moshav: Dwelling place; settlement; seat.
מוֹשָׁב
This branch makes the link between inhabiting a place and having a settled dwelling explicit.
THE PATTERN
Sacred identity does not prevent a house or city from becoming empty and ruined.
But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.THE THREAD
But go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh, where I set my name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of my people Israel.Jeremiah 26:9 invokes Shiloh as the measure for what can happen to a house and city carrying the LORD’s name. Jeremiah 7:12 opens that image: it names the LORD’s place at Shiloh and directs the reader to see what was done to it.
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