What Does Jeremiah 43:7 Mean in the King James?
So they came into the land of Egypt: for they obeyed not the voice of the LORD: thus came they even to Tahpanhes.
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
A refusal to respond to the LORD’s voice is already a route into Egypt: constriction begins in the ear before it appears on the map.
THE MEANING
Their refusal to hear and respond to the LORD’s voice carries them into Egypt and onward to Tahpanhes: not answering has a destination. The verse speaks now wherever closed hearing becomes a path into constriction.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that refusing to respond leaves you free to choose where the path leads.
THE ROOT
שָׁמְעוּ
shāmeʿū
GROWS FROM
שמע
To hear, heed, or respond.
The Hebrew says they did not hear; in this verb, hearing can include heeding and responding, which is why the KJV renders it “obeyed.” The break is not a lack of sound but a break between hearing and response, and that break has a destination.
ALSO GROWS
shema: Hear; heed and respond.
שְׁמַע
The familiar call to hear carries the response that this verse says is missing.
shemu'ah: A report; something heard.
שְׁמוּעָה
This branch makes hearing the reception of a message, while the verse reveals what happens when reception does not become response.
מִצְרַיִם
Mitzrayim
GROWS FROM
צרר
tsarar
To bind or press in; צַר (tsar) means narrow or constricting.
“Egypt” in this verse is Mitzrayim. Mitzrayim carries the image of the two narrows. Their refusal deposits them in a place whose name bears the shape of constriction: the unheeded voice becomes a route into tightness.
ALSO GROWS
metzar: A narrow place; distress.
מֵצַר
This branch names constriction directly, echoing the narrowing that their refusal enters.
tsar: Narrow, tight, constricting.
צַר
The narrowness contained in this word illuminates the meaning carried by Mitzrayim.
THE PATTERN
When a voice calling for response is refused, that refusal becomes a path that carries people backward into constriction.
But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee:But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward.To whom our fathers would not obey, but thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt,THE THREAD
And now I have this day declared it to you; but ye have not obeyed the voice of the LORD your God, nor any thing for the which he hath sent me unto you.The Hebrew verb translated “obeyed” here shares the root שמע (shama), hear and respond, with “obeyed not” in Jeremiah 43:7. Jeremiah 42:21 names the refusal; the next verse shows where that refusal carries them.
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