What Does Jeremiah 3:21 Mean in the King James?
A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the LORD their God.
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 verse sets forgetting beside a cry of weeping and supplication: estrangement has not silenced the plea.
THE MEANING
A life can bend away from the LORD until God slips from awareness, while grief still rises as weeping and pleading. Israel’s name, יִשְׂרָאֵל (Yisra’el, “one who strives with God”), carries that struggle in its very sound; here the struggle is voiced openly.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Forgetting the LORD means there can be no voice left to reach toward God.
THE ROOT
שָׁכְחוּ
shakhechu
GROWS FROM
שׁכח
To forget, fail to remember, or let slip from awareness.
“forgotten” in this verse is shakhechu. The Hebrew verb names more than a missing fact: it can describe ceasing to keep someone in mind. The verse places that forgetting beside weeping and entreaty, making the loss of remembrance audible as grief.
ALSO GROWS
shikhḥah: Forgetfulness
שִׁכְחָה
This noun names forgetting as a condition, showing that the verse’s word belongs to a wider language of lost remembrance.
nishkaḥ: Forgotten; one who is forgotten
נִשְׁכָּח
This form uses the same consonants to describe what has fallen from someone’s awareness.
דַּרְכָּם
darkam
GROWS FROM
דרך
To tread or step; by extension, a path or course.
The word for their “way” shares its root with the verb “to tread.” A way is a course shaped by steps, so the verse’s image of a perverted way reaches into the direction a life repeatedly takes.
ALSO GROWS
derekh: Way, path, or road
דֶּרֶךְ
This is the noun used for their course; its root keeps the image of a walked path beneath the English word “way.”
darakh: To tread or step
דָּרַךְ
The verb shares all three root consonants and shows how a path is made by the steps taken along it.
THE PATTERN
Grief over separation can become the spoken turning back toward relationship.
Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings. Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.O Israel, return unto the LORD thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee,THE THREAD
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.Jeremiah’s שָׁכְחוּ (shakhechu, “they forgot”) shares the root שׁכח with Isaiah’s repeated “forget.” Isaiah sets human forgetting beside the words “yet will I not forget thee,” letting the same root reveal a striking difference between what people may forget and what God says remains remembered.
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