Bible Strands
Jeremiah 6:21
Therefore this is what the LORD says: “I will lay stumbling blocks before this people; fathers and sons alike will be staggered; friends and neighbors will perish.”
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Yahweh speaks through Jeremiah to the people of Judah immediately after rejecting their burnt offerings and sacrifices, directly between the announcement of their spiritual rejection and the impending northern invasion. The words — לָ/כֵ֗ן (la./Khen) means "therefore," and נֹתֵ֛ן (no.Ten) means "[am] about to give," linking the people's rejected worship to the immediate divine action. The thread — The motif of God placing stumbling blocks before a rebellious group appears in Isaiah 8:14, Jeremiah 13:16, and Ezekiel 3:20. Why it lands — The text states that God will lay obstacles before the people, causing fathers, sons, friends, and neighbors to stagger and perish, demanding recognition that the rejection of worship triggers direct sovereign judgment.
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 thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will lay stumblingblocks before this people, and the fathers and the sons together shall fall upon them; the neighbour and his friend shall perish.
Cross-references
- Isaiah 8:14 And He will be a sanctuary—but to both houses of Israel a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, to the dwellers of Jerusalem a trap and a snare.
- Jeremiah 13:16 Give glory to the LORD your God before He brings darkness, before your feet stumble on the dusky mountains. You wait for light, but He turns it into deep gloom and thick darkness.
- Ezekiel 3:20 Now if a righteous man turns from his righteousness and commits iniquity, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die. If you did not warn him, he will die in his sin, and the righteous acts he did will not be remembered. And I will hold you responsible for his blood.
- Isaiah 9:14 So the LORD will cut off Israel’s head and tail, both palm branch and reed in a single day.
- 2 Chronicles 36:17 So He brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who put their young men to the sword in the sanctuary, sparing neither young men nor young women, neither elderly nor infirm. God gave them all into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar,
- Isaiah 24:2 people and priest alike, servant and master, maid and mistress, buyer and seller, lender and borrower, creditor and debtor.
- Jeremiah 9:21 For death has climbed in through our windows; it has entered our fortresses to cut off the children from the streets, the young men from the town squares.
- Jeremiah 15:2 If they ask you, ‘Where shall we go?’ you are to tell them that this is what the LORD says: ‘Those destined for death, to death; those destined for the sword, to the sword; those destined for famine, to famine; and those destined for captivity, to captivity.’
- Jeremiah 16:3 For this is what the LORD says concerning the sons and daughters born in this place, and the mothers who bore them, and the fathers who fathered them in this land:
- 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.