Bible Strands
Jeremiah 23:29
“Is not My word like fire,” declares the LORD, “and like a hammer that smashes a rock?”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Yahweh speaks through Jeremiah in a judgment oracle against false prophets who steal and misattribute divine words (ch. 23). This verse asserts the nature of God's word between the contrast of dream versus word (v. 28) and the threat against the thieves (v. 30).
The words — פַטִּישׁ (pattish), "a hammer," paired with יְפֹצֵץ (yepotse ts), "it shatters," from the root פָּצַץ meaning to break into fragments. The verb is not a gentle cracking but a violent shattering.
The thread — The fire image recurs in Jeremiah 5:14, where God makes His words "a fire in your mouth," and Hebrews 4:12 develops the piercing dimension of the word. Luke 24:32 records the subjective experience of that fire in the disciples' hearts.
Why it lands — The verse positions the reader as the object of the hammer, not the wielder. God's word does not suggest; it breaks, and the question is whether you are the rock that shatters or the grain that survives the straw.
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
Is not my word like as a fire? saith the Lord; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?
Cross-references
- Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it pierces even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
- Jeremiah 5:14 Therefore this is what the LORD God of Hosts says: “Because you have spoken this word, I will make My words a fire in your mouth and this people the wood it consumes.
- Luke 24:32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us as He spoke with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
- Jeremiah 20:9 If I say, “I will not mention Him or speak any more in His name,” His message becomes a fire burning in my heart, shut up in my bones, and I become weary of holding it in, and I cannot prevail.
- 2 Corinthians 10:4 The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the flesh. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
- John 6:63 The Spirit gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.
- Revelation 11:5 If anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds from their mouths and devours their enemies. In this way, anyone who wants to harm them must be killed.
- Acts 2:3 They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.
- Acts 2:37 When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and asked Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
- 2 Corinthians 2:16 To the one we are an odor that brings death, to the other a fragrance that brings life. And who is qualified for such a task?