What Does Jeremiah 7:18 Mean in the King James?
The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger.
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 offering is a household project: every generation’s ordinary labor is recruited into the same rival allegiance.
THE MEANING
This verse shows a household’s ordinary work converging into a shared offering: children gather, fathers kindle, women knead, and the finished food and drink go to another power. Its charge reaches the reader wherever shared routines give allegiance visible form; the verse names that offering as something that provokes God’s anger.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that domestic labor is spiritually neutral dissolves here: gathering fuel, preparing food, and pouring drink become acts of allegiance through the purpose they serve.
THE ROOT
מְלֶכֶת
malkat
GROWS FROM
מלך
To rule or reign.
“queen” in this verse is malkat. The title carries the root of ruling, so the offering is directed toward a rival claim of rule over the heavens. The household’s work makes that allegiance communal and visible.
ALSO GROWS
melekh: King; one who rules.
מֶלֶךְ
The masculine form makes the shared rule-root clear beneath the title “queen.”
malkut: Kingship, reign, or kingdom.
מַלְכוּת
This branch shows that the root names a domain of rule, giving the offering the weight of allegiance to another authority.
נְסָכִים
nesakhim
GROWS FROM
נסך
To pour out; also to cast or form by pouring.
“drink offerings” in this verse is nesakhim. Hebrew links the poured drink offering to the same root used for casting metal. The verse’s offerings are made through ordinary work: devotion is prepared and poured, not merely felt.
ALSO GROWS
nesekh: A drink offering or libation.
נֵסֶךְ
This is the singular form of the poured offering named in the verse.
massekah: A cast image or molded metal object.
מַסֵּכָה
Its shared root connects pouring liquid with pouring metal into a form, revealing a common image of material devotion made through pouring.
THE PATTERN
Allegiance takes shape in what people serve, share, and repeatedly offer.
And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.THE THREAD
They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger.Both verses use כעס (ka’as), “to provoke to anger”; Deuteronomy places that provocation alongside strange gods. This makes Jeremiah’s closing phrase the relational consequence of the household’s rival offering, not an incidental emotional aside.
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