What Does Jeremiah 27:8 Mean in the King James?
And it shall come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve the same Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and that will not put their neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the LORD, with the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed them by his hand.
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
Here, refusing the king’s yoke does not open a path to freedom; it is answered by violence that consumes the nation.
THE MEANING
The verse places the reader before a brutal equation: refuse the king’s yoke, and sword, famine, and pestilence pursue the nation until it is consumed through his hand. The LORD names this punishment himself, with imperial force as its instrument. Submission is presented as survival, but only under another king’s command.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that refusal by itself guarantees freedom: here, refusal of the king’s yoke is met with more devastating violence.
THE ROOT
יַעַבְדוּ
yaʿavdū
GROWS FROM
עבד
Work, labor, serve.
יַעַבְדוּ (yaʿavdū, “they serve”) grows from עבד (ʿ-b-d, “work/serve”), the same seed behind servant and labor. The neck beneath a yoke makes that service bodily: the king claims the nation’s work and allegiance.
ALSO GROWS
ʿeved: A servant, worker, or enslaved person.
עֶבֶד
The person under command is named by the same root as the act of serving, making the submission concrete rather than abstract.
ʿavodah: Labor, work, or service.
עֲבֹדָה
This branch keeps the demand close to the work of a ruled body beneath the yoke.
וּפָקַדְתִּי
ūfāqadtî
GROWS FROM
פקד
Attend to, visit, muster, or count; here, visit with punishment.
The verb rendered “punish” is וּפָקַדְתִּי (ūfāqadtî, “I will visit/attend to”), from פקד (p-q-d; pāqad), a root that can name visitation and mustering. Here the visit is explicitly punitive: its instruments remain sword, famine, and pestilence.
ALSO GROWS
pāqōd pāqadtî: To visit or attend to.
פָּקֹד פָּקַדְתִּי
Exodus uses this root for God’s attention to an oppressed people; the different outcome shows that the root names intervention, while the surrounding verse determines its force.
tifqedū: To count or muster for an organized reckoning.
תִּפְקְדוּ
The same root can describe mustering a people; here its visitation falls on a nation that refuses the king’s demand.
THE PATTERN
A yoke makes authority bodily: it shows whose rule rests on the neck and what that rule weighs.
Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the LORD shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.Now therefore why tempt ye God, to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear?For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.THE THREAD
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.The “serve” in Jeremiah and the “service” and “serve” in Exodus share עבד (ʿ-b-d, “work/serve”). Exodus makes the root’s bodily labor plain; Jeremiah places that service under a king’s yoke and threatens the nation with lethal judgment for refusing it.
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