What Does Jeremiah 6:28 Mean in the King James?
They are all grievous revolters, walking with slanders: they are brass and iron; they are all corrupters.
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
Slander here is not a stray sentence but a path they walk together, and the verse names its fruit: corruption.
THE MEANING
Rebellion has become a shared way of moving: damaging reports travel among the people, and ruin follows. The brass-and-iron image gives this condition a hard, resistant texture; in the surrounding refining scene, the material resists being cleansed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that slander is weightless because it is only speech: the verse places it within the same movement as the community’s corruption.
THE ROOT
רָכִיל
rakhil
GROWS FROM
רכל
To go about or traffic; רָכִיל names one who carries reports about.
“slanders” in this verse is rakhil. The Hebrew calls them הֹלְכֵי רָכִיל, literally “walkers of rakhil.” The image makes slander a circulating practice, a report carried from person to person, not merely a single spoken insult.
ALSO GROWS
rakhil: Talebearer
רָכִיל
This same word names the person who goes about carrying tales, making the verse’s “walking” image concrete.
rokhel: Trader or merchant
רֹכֵל
A related form evokes traffic and exchange, sharpening the sense of reports moving among people.
סָרֵי סוֹרְרִים
sarei sorerim
GROWS FROM
סרר
To act stubbornly or rebel; to turn away and resist.
“revolters” in this verse is sarei sorerim. The Hebrew stacks the root’s sound in סָרֵי סוֹרְרִים, naming them as stubborn rebels. The repeated sound makes rebellion feel like a condition that reinforces itself, rather than an isolated act.
ALSO GROWS
sarar: To rebel or act stubbornly
סָרַר
This is the verb-root beneath the verse’s description of the people.
sorer: Stubborn or rebellious
סוֹרֵר
This form appears in the phrase “stubborn and rebellious son” in Deuteronomy 21:18, carrying the same resistant quality.
מַשְׁחִיתִים
mashchitim
GROWS FROM
שחת
To ruin, destroy, or spoil.
“corrupters” in this verse is mashchitim. The verse ends with the people as מַשְׁחִיתִים, those who ruin. The root moves the description from what they carry in speech to the damage their shared way produces.
ALSO GROWS
shachat: To ruin or corrupt
שָׁחַת
This verb describes the earth as corrupt in Genesis 6:12, where corruption spreads across the whole scene.
mashchit: A destroyer or corrupter
מַשְׁחִית
This related form names the one who brings ruin, giving the verse’s closing word an active force.
THE PATTERN
A community’s corruption travels through practices and words shared among its members.
Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD.And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.THE THREAD
Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people: neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour: I am the LORD.Jeremiah calls them “walkers of rakhil”; Leviticus uses that same word for the talebearer who goes up and down among the people. The shared root turns slander into circulation: it is a path reports travel, not just a sentence spoken once.
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