Bible Strands
Jeremiah 31:21
“Set up the road markers, put up the signposts. Keep the highway in mind, the road you have traveled. Return, O Virgin Israel, return to these cities of yours.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God speaks to Israel, explicitly addressing them as "Virgin Israel," and commands a return to their former cities. This directive follows His declaration of compassion for Ephraim and immediately precedes a rhetorical question about the duration of their wandering.
The words — הַצִּ֧יבִי (ha.Tzi.vi) literally means "set up" and צִיֻּנִ֗ים (tzi.yu.Nim) means "signposts." The text commands the physical erection of these markers to guide the journey back.
The thread — The instruction to prepare a highway and place markers recurs in Isaiah 62:10 and Psalm 84:5, where the focus shifts to building the road and fixing the heart on pilgrimage. Jeremiah 50:5 similarly directs the people to ask for the way to Zion and orient their faces toward it.
Why it lands — The text demands a deliberate return to specific settlements by actively remembering the path already traveled. It requires the reader to treat restoration as a guided journey that relies on established markers rather than unstructured wandering.
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
Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps: set thine heart toward the highway, even the way which thou wentest: turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 50:5 They will ask the way to Zion and turn their faces toward it. They will come and join themselves to the LORD in an everlasting covenant that will never be forgotten.
- Isaiah 62:10 Go out, go out through the gates; prepare the way for the people! Build it up, build up the highway; clear away the stones; raise a banner for the nations!
- Psalms 84:5 Blessed are those whose strength is in You, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
- Isaiah 48:20 Leave Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans! Declare it with a shout of joy, proclaim it, let it go out to the ends of the earth, saying, “The LORD has redeemed His servant Jacob!”
- Isaiah 52:11 Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing; come out from it, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the LORD.
- Isaiah 57:14 And it will be said, “Build it up, build it up, prepare the way, take every obstacle out of the way of My people.”
- Jeremiah 3:14 “Return, O faithless children,” declares the LORD, “for I am your master, and I will take you—one from a city and two from a family—and bring you to Zion.
- Jeremiah 31:4 Again I will build you, and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out in joyful dancing.
- Jeremiah 51:50 You who have escaped the sword, depart and do not linger! Remember the LORD from far away, and let Jerusalem come to mind.”
- Ezekiel 40:4 “Son of man,” he said to me, “look with your eyes, hear with your ears, and pay attention to everything I am going to show you, for that is why you have been brought here. Report to the house of Israel everything you see.”