What Does Jeremiah 8:13 Mean in the King James?
I will surely consume them, saith the LORD: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them.
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 Hebrew verb behind “consume” means “gather,” turning the loss into a harvest where even the people are collected away as their trees fail.
THE MEANING
The verse meets you with loss at every layer: there are no grapes or figs, the leaf withers, and the people are gathered away. What has been given passes beyond their keeping as the signs of life disappear; the text leaves the deprivation stark.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that loss is confined to a failed harvest: the leaves wither, and the people themselves are gathered away.
THE ROOT
אָסֹף אֲסִיפֵם
ʾāsōp ʾăsîp̄ēm
GROWS FROM
אסף
Gather, collect, bring in.
The verb is doubled, literally “gathering I will gather them,” while the KJV renders its force as “surely consume.” The same root names the gathering of a harvest, making this a bitter ingathering: the people are gathered away while the crops yield nothing.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsîp̄: Ingathering, harvest.
אָסִיף
This word for gathering in a harvest echoes the verse’s failed crops and gives its gathering of people a grim agricultural edge.
ʾasuppāh: Assembly, collection.
אֲסֻפָּה
The same root gathers people or things into a group, connecting the people in this verse to the harvest imagery.
יַעַבְרוּם
yaʿavərūm
GROWS FROM
עבר
Cross over, pass across, pass by.
“pass away” in this verse is yaʿavərūm. The final verb gives loss a direction: what was given crosses away from them rather than simply becoming less. Beside the first verb’s gathering, the verse traces both people and possessions moving out of reach.
ALSO GROWS
maʿăvār: A passage or crossing.
מַעֲבָר
This noun makes the root’s movement across a boundary concrete, as the verse describes what was given passing beyond the people.
ʿōvēr: One who passes or crosses.
עֹבֵר
The participle keeps the root’s sense of ongoing movement alive in the verse’s description of things passing away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses fruit and leaf together as visible signs of whether a tree’s life is sustained.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.THE THREAD
Gather my saints together unto me; those that have made a covenant with me by sacrifice.The Hebrew behind Jeremiah’s “consume” is the doubled root אסף (ʾāsap̄, “gather”); Psalm 50:5 uses that same root in “Gather my saints together.” The shared verb means collection, while the destination changes its force: Jeremiah’s people are gathered away, while the psalm’s are gathered to God.
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