Bible Strands
Jeremiah 11:21
Therefore this is what the LORD says concerning the people of Anathoth who are seeking your life and saying, “You must not prophesy in the name of the LORD, or you will die by our hand.”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — God speaks through Jeremiah regarding the men of Anathoth who seek his life. This declaration follows Jeremiah’s prayer for vengeance and immediately precedes the announcement of their destruction.
The words — לָ/כֵ֗ן (la./Khen) means "therefore" and כֹּֽה־ (koh-) means "thus," structuring the oracle as a direct judicial response to the threats against Jeremiah.
The thread — The suppression of prophetic truth parallels Isaiah 30:10, where crowds demand pleasantries over revelation. The pattern of concealed hostility and whispered threats resurfaces in Jeremiah 20:10.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that divine judgment targets those who use violence to silence truth-telling. It requires the reader to accept that opposing prophetic revelation triggers immediate divine reckoning.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Therefore thus saith the Lord of the men of Anathoth, that seek thy life, saying, Prophesy not in the name of the Lord, that thou die not by our hand:
Cross-references
- Isaiah 30:10 They say to the seers, “Stop seeing visions!” and to the prophets, “Do not prophesy to us the truth! Speak to us pleasant words; prophesy illusions.
- Jeremiah 12:5 “If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses? If you stumble in a peaceful land, how will you do in the thickets of the Jordan?
- Jeremiah 20:10 For I have heard the whispering of many: “Terror is on every side! Report him; let us report him!” All my trusted friends watch for my fall: “Perhaps he will be deceived so that we may prevail against him and take our vengeance upon him.”
- Amos 2:12 “But you made the Nazirites drink wine and commanded the prophets not to prophesy.
- Luke 13:33 Nevertheless, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day, for it is not admissible for a prophet to perish outside of Jerusalem.
- Jeremiah 20:1 When Pashhur the priest, the son of Immer and the chief official in the house of the LORD, heard Jeremiah prophesying these things,
- Jeremiah 26:8 and as soon as he had finished telling all the people everything the LORD had commanded him to say, the priests and prophets and all the people seized him, shouting, “You must surely die!
- Jeremiah 38:1 Now Shephatiah son of Mattan, Gedaliah son of Pashhur, Jucal son of Shelemiah, and Pashhur son of Malchijah heard that Jeremiah had been telling all the people:
- Amos 7:13 But never prophesy at Bethel again, because it is the sanctuary of the king and the temple of the kingdom.”
- Micah 2:6 “Do not preach,” they preach. “Do not preach these things; disgrace will not overtake us.”