What Does Jeremiah 8:14 Mean in the King James?
Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities, and let us be silent there: for the LORD our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against the LORD.
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 people seek silence as shelter, only to discover that silence has already become the judgment and the drink is bitter.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the moment a people reaches for walls and quiet while the consequences are already inside the refuge. The repeated silence turns the plea into recognition: the LORD has silenced them, and they name the bitter drink as the cost of their missing against him.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that strong walls can put a people beyond the consequences of what they have done.
THE ROOT
דָּמַם
damam
GROWS FROM
דמם
damam
Be still, be silent, cease.
“silent / put to silence” in this verse is damam. English gives you two silences: the people’s plan to be quiet in the city and the LORD’s act of silencing them. Both Hebrew verbs grow from דמם (damam, be still or silent), folding the sought hush and the imposed hush into one word-family.
ALSO GROWS
dumiyyah: Silence, stillness; quiet waiting.
דּוּמִיָּה
This is the word behind “waiteth” in Psalm 62:1, showing that this root’s silence can also hold waiting upon God.
demamah: Silence, hush, stillness.
דְּמָמָה
The same family can name a hush as well as the act of becoming silent, giving the repeated silence here a wider range than mere absence of speech.
חָטָאנוּ
chatanu
GROWS FROM
חטא
chata'
Miss, err, fail to hit the mark.
“sinned” in this verse is chatanu. The root adds the image of missing the mark beneath the speaker’s direct confession against the LORD. It deepens the familiar word without canceling the force of the confession.
ALSO GROWS
chet: Missing, offense.
חֵטְא
This noun carries the same image of missing into the speaker’s acknowledgment of what has gone wrong.
chatta't: Missing or offense; in other contexts, a sin offering.
חַטָּאת
The same word-family can name the missing and, in other passages, an offering associated with it.
THE PATTERN
What turns a people away from the LORD can take root as bitterness, become their portion, and spread beyond the person who first bears it.
Lest there should be among you man, or woman, or family, or tribe, whose heart turneth away this day from the LORD our God, to go and serve the gods of these nations; lest there should be among you a root that beareth gall and wormwood;Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink.Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;THE THREAD
To the chief Musician, to Jeduthun, A Psalm of David. Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.The Hebrew behind “waiteth” is דּוּמִיָּה (dumiyyah, silence or stillness), from דמם (damam, be still or silent), the same root behind both silences in Jeremiah. Here the shared root turns toward quiet waiting on God, revealing its range without erasing the bitterness of Jeremiah’s scene.
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