What Does Jeremiah 38:9 Mean in the King James?
My lord the king, these men have done evil in all that they have done to Jeremiah the prophet, whom they have cast into the dungeon; and he is like to die for hunger in the place where he is: for there is no more bread in the city.
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 pit turns hidden power into a bodily crisis: the man cast away is near death while the whole city has no bread.
THE MEANING
The verse names evil by its bodily consequence: a person is cast into a pit and brought near death by hunger while the city has no bread. Confinement and public scarcity meet in one vulnerable body; the danger is concrete, not abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it undoes is that harm stays harmless when its victim disappears from view; the pit, hunger, and empty city make the cost bodily and near.
THE ROOT
הִשְׁלִיכוּ
hishlikhu
GROWS FROM
שׁלך
to throw, cast, or fling
“cast” in this verse is hishlikhu. The verb pictures a person flung into a pit, at the mercy of what lies below. The same root can describe casting a burden onto support, so here its starkness is in a person being thrown where help is absent.
ALSO GROWS
hishlikhu: they cast or threw
הִשְׁלִיכוּ
This is the form used for the men throwing Jeremiah into the pit.
hashlekh: cast or throw; an imperative form
הַשְׁלֵךְ
Psalm 55:22 uses this form to cast a burden onto the LORD, showing how the root’s force depends on what is thrown and where it lands.
בָּרָעָב
ba-ra'av
GROWS FROM
רעב
to be hungry; hunger or famine
This root can name hunger in one body and famine across a community. The verse holds those scales together: Jeremiah’s bodily danger unfolds as the city’s supply is exhausted.
ALSO GROWS
ra'av: hunger or famine
רָעָב
This is the noun in the verse, naming the condition that brings Jeremiah near death.
ra'ev: hungry; a person who is hungry
רָעֵב
This form names the hungry person, bringing the same root from the broad condition of famine down to the body experiencing it.
THE PATTERN
Care becomes concrete where freedom, food, and bodily need are at stake.
Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh?Which executeth judgment for the oppressed: which giveth food to the hungry. The LORD looseth the prisoners:And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?THE THREAD
Then Zedekiah the king commanded that they should commit Jeremiah into the court of the prison, and that they should give him daily a piece of bread out of the bakers’ street, until all the bread in the city were spent. Thus Jeremiah remained in the court of the prison.The word לֶחֶם (lechem, bread or food) appears in both verses. Here, Jeremiah 37:21 shows his daily portion lasting only while the city’s bread lasts; the current verse names the moment that supply is gone and his life is at risk.
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