What Does Jeremiah 37:17 Mean in the King James?
Then Zedekiah the king sent, and took him out: and the king asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any word from the LORD? And Jeremiah said, There is: for, said he, thou shalt be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon.
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 word from the LORD answers the king’s private question with an unsettlingly concrete matter: he will be given into another king’s hand.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks in the gap between asking for an answer and hearing one: a word may name exposure rather than rescue. Here the answer is exact and concrete, Zedekiah is to be given into Babylon’s king’s hand, and secrecy does not make the message gentler.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a word from the LORD must confirm the asker’s preferred outcome or arrive as comfort.
THE ROOT
דָּבָר
davar
GROWS FROM
דבר
Speak, declare; in its noun form, word or matter.
The Hebrew דָּבָר (davar) can mean “word,” “matter,” or “affair.” The king asks for a word, and Jeremiah’s answer makes that word inseparable from the concrete matter it names: being placed in Babylon’s king’s hand.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: He spoke; spoke.
דִּבֵּר
The speaking form shows that this word has a voice behind it: Jeremiah answers with a spoken declaration.
devarim: Words; matters or affairs.
דְּבָרִים
The same root can name words and matters, joining what is said to what is at stake.
תִּנָּתֵן
tinnaten
GROWS FROM
נתן
Give, set, place.
“delivered” in this verse is tinnaten. The Hebrew תִּנָּתֵן (tinnaten) means “you will be given,” from נָתַן (natan), “give, set, place.” The passive form makes the transfer plain: Zedekiah will be placed in the hand of Babylon’s king.
ALSO GROWS
natan: To give, set, or place.
נָתַן
This is the root verb beneath “delivered”; the verse’s surrounding words show where the giving places him.
mattanah: Gift or present.
מַתָּנָה
This word from the same root names something given; here the context makes clear that the transfer is forced, not benevolent.
THE PATTERN
A word from God is not detached information: it names the matter at stake and acts upon what it reveals.
And the LORD said to Samuel, Behold, I will do a thing in Israel, at which both the ears of every one that heareth it shall tingle.So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.THE THREAD
And afterward, saith the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy.Jeremiah 21:7 uses the same נתן (natan, “give, set, place”) root for what the KJV renders “deliver” into the king’s hand. The shared root makes the transfer concrete, while the surrounding words preserve the violence of its outcome.
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