Bible Strands
Jeremiah 30:16
Nevertheless, all who devour you will be devoured, and all your adversaries—every one of them—will go off into exile. Those who plundered you will be plundered, and all who raided you will be raided.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD speaks to Judah in the midst of their judgment, immediately after naming their iniquity as the cause of their wound (v.15) and before promising healing (v.17). The moment is the pivot: the same God who inflicted the wound announces the fall of those who inflicted it.
The words — The verse is built on the root אכל (ʾākhāl, "to devour/eat"), appearing in both the noun form אֹכְלַיִךְ ("your devourers") and the passive verb יֵאָכֵלוּ ("they will be devoured"), so the same verb that describes what was done to Judah is turned back on their enemies. This lexical symmetry is the structural engine of the reversal.
The thread — Isaiah 33:1 uses the same reversal logic ("O destroyer, never destroyed… you will be destroyed"), and Exodus 23:22 frames God as "an enemy to your enemies" as a covenant promise. Jeremiah 10:25 prays for exactly this: God's wrath poured out on the nations that do not acknowledge Him.
Why it lands — It demands that the reader hold the wound (v.15) and the reversal (v.16) simultaneously, without collapsing one into the other. The promise is not that the pain was meaningless but that the violence was not the final word.
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 all they that devour thee shall be devoured; and all thine adversaries, every one of them, shall go into captivity; and they that spoil thee shall be a spoil, and all that prey upon thee will I give for a prey.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 10:25 Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not acknowledge You, and on the families that do not call on Your name. For they have devoured Jacob; they have consumed him and finished him off; they have devastated his homeland.
- Isaiah 33:1 Woe to you, O destroyer never destroyed, O traitor never betrayed! When you have finished destroying, you will be destroyed. When you have finished betraying, you will be betrayed.
- Exodus 23:22 But if you will listen carefully to his voice and do everything I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and a foe to your foes.
- Zechariah 2:8 For this is what the LORD of Hosts says: “After His Glory has sent Me against the nations that have plundered you—for whoever touches you touches the apple of His eye—
- Revelation 13:10 “If anyone is destined for captivity, into captivity he will go; if anyone is to die by the sword, by the sword he must be killed.” Here is a call for the perseverance and faith of the saints.
- Psalms 129:5 May all who hate Zion be turned back in shame.
- Isaiah 14:2 The nations will escort Israel and bring it to its homeland. Then the house of Israel will possess the nations as menservants and maidservants in the LORD’s land. They will make captives of their captors and rule over their oppressors.
- Lamentations 4:21 So rejoice and be glad, O Daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz. Yet the cup will pass to you as well; you will get drunk and expose yourself.
- Joel 3:8 I will sell your sons and daughters into the hands of the people of Judah, and they will sell them to the Sabeans—to a distant nation.” Indeed, the LORD has spoken.
- Psalms 137:8 O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, blessed is he who repays you as you have done to us.