Jeremiah 32:4 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Jeremiah 32:4
And Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the hand of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes shall behold his eyes;
the mouth (as the means of blowing) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
mouth
פִּ֔יוPiv
H6310
the mouth (as the means of blowing) · noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
eyes
וְעֵינָ֖יוve.'ei.Nav
H5869
an eye (literally or figuratively) · conjunction + noun, common feminine dual construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
behold
תִּרְאֶֽינָהtir.'Ei.nah
H7200
to see · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person feminine plural
eyes
עֵינָ֥יוei.nov
H5869
an eye (literally or figuratively) · noun, common feminine dual construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
2 Kings 25:4-7 And the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled by night by the way of the gate between two walls, which is by the king’s garden: (n…
Jeremiah 37:17 Then Zedekiah the king sent, and took him out: and the king asked him secretly in his house, and said, Is there any word from the LORD? And…
Jeremiah 38:18 But if thou wilt not go forth to the king of Babylon’s princes, then shall this city be given into the hand of the Chaldeans, and they shall…
Jeremiah 38:23 So they shall bring out all thy wives and thy children to the Chaldeans: and thou shalt not escape out of their hand, but shalt be taken by…
Jeremiah 39:4-7 And it came to pass, that when Zedekiah the king of Judah saw them, and all the men of war, then they fled, and went forth out of the city b…
Jeremiah 52:8-11 But the army of the Chaldeans pursued after the king, and overtook Zedekiah in the plains of Jericho; and all his army was scattered from hi…
Ezekiel 12:12-13 And the prince that is among them shall bear upon his shoulder in the twilight, and shall go forth: they shall dig through the wall to carry…
Ezekiel 17:13-21 And hath taken of the king’s seed, and made a covenant with him, and hath taken an oath of him: he hath also taken the mighty of the land:
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 32:1-15
It appears by the date of this chapter that we are now coming very nigh to that fatal year which completed the desolations of Judah and Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. God's judgments came gradually upon them, but, they not meeting him by repentance in the way of his judgments, he proceeded in his controversy till all was laid waste, which was in the eleventh year of Zedekiah; now what is here recorded happened in the tenth. The king of Babylon's army had now invested Jerusalem and was carrying on the siege with vigour, not doubting but in a little time to make themselves masters of it, while the besieged had taken up a desperate resolution not to surrender, but to hold out to the last extremity…
his eyes shall behold his eyes--that is, only before reaching Babylon, which he was not to see. Jer 39:6-7 harmonizes this prophecy (Jer 32:4) with the seemingly opposite prophecy, Eze 12:13, "He shall not see."
John Gill on Jeremiah 32:4
And Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the hand of the Chaldeans,.... This is a continuation of the prophecy of Jeremiah, repeated by the king to him, and which concerns himself more especially; who, upon the taking of the city, would endeavour to make his escape, as he did; but should not be able, Jeremiah 52:8;
but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon; not only into the hands of his army, and of his generals, but into his own hand personally; since it follows:
and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes shall behold his eyes; converse together face to face, eye to eye; but no doubt with different tones and looks; the king of Babylon upbraid…
Jeremiah 32:4
4. And Zedekiah king of Judah shall not escape out of the hand of the Chaldeans, but shall surely be delivered into the hand of the king of Babylon, and shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and his eyes shall behold his eyes;
4. Et Zedechia rex Jehudah not effugiet e manu Chaldeorum, quia tradendo tradam in manum regis Babel, et loquetur os ejus cum ore illius, et oculi ejus octrios ejus videbunt.
When, therefore, the king saw that he would not be exempt from the common judgment, he was especially displeased with Jeremiah; for kings seek to be exempt from all laws, and when they allow the people to be reproved, they yet wish themselves to be deemed sacred. As then Jeremiah c…
The Church Fathers
(Verses 4, 5) Behold, I will give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he will capture it. And King Zedekiah of Judah will not escape from the hand of the Chaldeans, but he will be handed over to the king of Babylon, and they will speak face to face and his eyes will see his eyes. And Zedekiah will be taken to Babylon, and he will stay there until I visit him, says the Lord. But if you fight against the Chaldeans, you will not have success. This was the reason for the anger of the king, that he preferred falsehood over truth and said that both the city of Jerusalem and King Zedekiah would be captured. And what is even worse, he will see the face of the king of Babylon and speak humbly and as a captive, as the most powerful king's madness. For it is a more serious terror to see the one whom you fear, and to be subjected to the verbal accusation before enduring the torment of punishment. And he says that he will lead Zedekiah into Babylon, and he will be there. The Septuagint translates it as "one of whom is unwillingly dragged, the other one signifies willingly going." And he says that he will be there. The word is ambiguous, so as not to seem to prophesy torture and miseries. And what follows is: Until I visit him, says the Lord, and if you fight against the Chaldeans, you will have nothing prosperous, which is not found in the Septuagint. And he wisely moderated his opinion, which can be referred to both the good and the bad. For visitation, as I often said, signifies both consolation and punishment.
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Zedekiah — Righteousness of Jehovah. (1.) The last king of Judah. He was the third son of Josiah, and his mother’s name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah, and hence he was the brother of Jehoahaz…
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
The time and the circumstances of the following message from God. - The message came to Jeremiah in the tenth year of Zedekiah, i.e., in the eighteenth year of Nebuchadrezzar (cf. Jer 25:1 and Jer 52:12), when the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem, and Jeremiah was kept in confinement in the fore-court of the royal palace. These historical data are inserted (Jer 32:2-5) in the form of circumstantial clauses: 'ואז חיל וגו, "for at that time the army of the king of Babylon was besieging Jerusalem." The siege had begun in the ninth year of Zedekiah (Jer 39:1; Jer 52:4), and was afterwards raised for a short time, in consequence of the approach of an auxiliary corps of Egyptian…
