What Does Jeremiah 7:21 Mean in the King James?
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Put your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat flesh.
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 verse’s biting command reduces worship to appetite: stack up the offerings, then eat the flesh.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks with cutting irony: ritual can be piled higher while the life beneath it stays unresponsive. When devotion has no living response, the whole performance contracts to slaughter and appetite.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that increasing religious effort can cover a refusal to listen; adding more to the altar does not make the relationship whole.
THE ROOT
עֹלוֹת
olot
GROWS FROM
עלה
ʿ-l-h
To go up, rise, ascend.
“burnt offerings” in this verse is olot. The offering’s name carries movement: it is what goes up. Set beside the command to eat flesh, that upward motion sharpens the irony, the ritual’s ascending gesture collapses into appetite.
ALSO GROWS
ʿaliyah: Ascent, going up.
עֲלִיָּה
The same root preserves upward movement inside a word for ascent.
maʿalah: A step or ascent.
מַעֲלָה
This branch carries the image of rising by a step, echoing the movement held in the offering’s name.
זְבָחִים
zevachim
GROWS FROM
זבח
z-b-ḥ
To slaughter, sacrifice.
“sacrifices” in this verse is zevachim. The root keeps “sacrifice” close to slaughter. The command’s final words, “eat flesh,” reduce the scene to the animals being offered and consumed; its force lies in that blunt physicality.
ALSO GROWS
zavach: To slaughter or offer a sacrifice.
זָבַח
The verb names the act carried by the sacrifices in this verse.
mizbeach: Altar.
מִזְבֵּחַ
The altar’s name shares the slaughter root, keeping the physical act inside the sacred place’s name.
THE PATTERN
Religious offerings cannot stand in for a life that hears God and acts in love.
And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering.And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.THE THREAD
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.Isaiah repeats both roots under the same pressure: the slaughter offering and the thing that ascends have multiplied until God asks what they are for. The echo makes Jeremiah’s command the bitter endpoint of empty accumulation, bringing the question of what the ritual means into view.
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