Bible Strands
Jeremiah 4:22
“For My people are fools; they have not known Me. They are foolish children, without understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but they know not how to do good.”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God speaks of His own people in the midst of approaching judgment (signal flags and horn in v.21; formless earth in v.23). The address is to Israel, framed as a lament over their moral inversion.
The words — 'e.Vil (H191) carries the verse: literally "a fool, a simpleton," it predicates the entire people as one undifferentiated fool. The verse compounds this with se.kha.Lim (H5530, "senseless"), a second, distinct word for foolishness.
The thread — Jeremiah 5:21 repeats the charge of foolishness and senselessness against the same people. Paul's 1 Corinthians 14:20 inverts the pattern: be infants in evil, mature in thinking — the exact opposite of what Jeremiah describes.
Why it lands — The verse names an asymmetry: the people are "skilled" in evil but ignorant of good, meaning their failure is not a lack of capacity but a misdirected one. It asks the reader to examine whether their own competence runs in the same direction.
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
For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding: they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.
Cross-references
- 1 Corinthians 14:20 Brothers, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature.
- Romans 16:19 Everyone has heard about your obedience, so I rejoice over you. But I want you to be wise about what is good and innocent about what is evil.
- Jeremiah 5:21 “Hear this, O foolish and senseless people, who have eyes but do not see, who have ears but do not hear.
- Hosea 4:6 My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you as My priests. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.
- Romans 3:11 There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
- Romans 1:22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools,
- Hosea 5:4 Their deeds do not permit them to return to their God, for a spirit of prostitution is within them, and they do not know the LORD.
- Micah 2:1 Woe to those who devise iniquity and plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they accomplish it because the power is in their hands.
- John 16:3 They will do these things because they have not known the Father or Me.
- Deuteronomy 32:28 Israel is a nation devoid of counsel, with no understanding among them.