Bible Strands
Jeremiah 15:7
I will scatter them with a winnowing fork at the gates of the land. I will bereave and destroy My people who have not turned from their ways.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God speaks through Jeremiah to the covenant people immediately after declaring weariness of compassion and resolving to stretch out His hand for destruction. The moment marks the transition from judicial warning to the execution of national judgment.
The words — שִׁכַּ֤לְתִּי (shi.Kal.ti) literally means I have made childless or bereaved, and בְּ/מִזְרֶ֖ה (be./miz.Reh) specifies a winnowing scoop. These terms anchor the divine action in agricultural imagery of forced separation and total loss.
The thread — The winnowing imagery resurfaces in Jeremiah 51:2 when God sends strangers to scatter Babylon, and in Matthew 3:12 where the coming judge uses a winnowing fork to separate wheat from chaff. Isaiah 9:13 establishes the persistent condition that the people did not return to the One who struck them.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that unrepentant rebellion triggers irreversible divine action. It requires the reader to confront the reality that continued refusal to turn from one's ways results in complete removal rather than correction.
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
And I will fan them with a fan in the gates of the land; I will bereave them of children, I will destroy my people, since they return not from their ways.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 51:2 I will send strangers to Babylon to winnow her and empty her land; for they will come against her from every side in her day of disaster.
- Matthew 3:12 His winnowing fork is in His hand to clear His threshing floor and to gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”
- Isaiah 9:13 But the people did not return to Him who struck them; they did not seek the LORD of Hosts.
- Isaiah 41:16 You will winnow them, and a wind will carry them away; a gale will scatter them. But you will rejoice in the LORD; you will glory in the Holy One of Israel.
- Jeremiah 5:3 O LORD, do not Your eyes look for truth? You struck them, but they felt no pain. You finished them off, but they refused to accept discipline. They have made their faces harder than stone and refused to repent.
- Psalms 1:4 Not so the wicked! For they are like chaff driven off by the wind.
- Jeremiah 8:4 So you are to tell them this is what the LORD says: “Do men fall and not get up again? Does one turn away and not return?
- Jeremiah 18:21 Therefore, hand their children over to famine; pour out the power of the sword upon them. Let their wives become childless and widowed; let their husbands be slain by disease, their young men struck down by the sword in battle.
- Deuteronomy 28:41 You will father sons and daughters, but they will not remain yours, because they will go into captivity.
- Jeremiah 4:11 At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem, “A searing wind from the barren heights in the desert blows toward the daughter of My people, but not to winnow or to sift;