What Does Jeremiah 35:7 Mean in the King James?
Neither shall ye build house, nor sow seed, nor plant vineyard, nor have any: but all your days ye shall dwell in tents; that ye may live many days in the land where ye be strangers.
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 joins long life with strangerhood: you can remain in a land for many days without making it your permanent home.
THE MEANING
The verse sets a life without house, seed, or vineyard beside a life that still lasts many days. Tent-dwelling keeps the reader present in the land while remaining a sojourner there. Here, duration does not require permanence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that a lasting life requires a permanent home and a future secured through what you build or plant.
THE ROOT
גָּרִים
gārîm
GROWS FROM
גור
To sojourn or reside as an outsider.
The word for “strangers” describes a way of dwelling: being in a land without settling into it as your permanent home. The verse holds that status together with “many days”, a long stay does not erase the condition of being a sojourner.
ALSO GROWS
gēr: A resident alien or sojourner.
גֵּר
It names the person whose presence in a place does not make that place a permanent possession.
megūrîm: Sojournings or residences as a sojourner.
מְגוּרִים
This related form keeps the emphasis on how someone inhabits a place, rather than simply where they are.
תִּזְרָעוּ
tizraʿu
GROWS FROM
זרע
To sow or scatter seed.
“sow” in this verse is tizraʿu. The command pairs sowing with seed, and both words grow from the same root, זרע. That root also names offspring, so the prohibition reaches beyond a harvest to the future that planting sets in motion.
ALSO GROWS
zeraʿ: Seed or offspring.
זֶרַע
It links planting a crop with establishing what will continue after the present.
zāraʿ: To sow or scatter seed.
זָרַע
The verb names the act of setting that future in motion, which this verse places alongside dwelling in tents.
THE PATTERN
A life can endure as a sojourner without turning the place it inhabits into a permanent possession.
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few and evil have the days of the years of my life been, and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their pilgrimage.The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:THE THREAD
Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.“Stranger” in this verse comes from the same root גור as “ye be strangers” in Jeremiah. The shared root opens a surprising possibility: a sojourner can be with God, present without being settled as owner.
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