Bible Strands
Jeremiah 8:3
And wherever I have banished them, the remnant of this evil family will choose death over life,” declares the LORD of Hosts.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD of Hosts speaks through Jeremiah to the exiled remnant of Judah, immediately after declaring that their unburied bodies will lie exposed as dung.
The words — נִבְחַר (nivChar) means it will be chosen, and מָוֶת (ma.vet) means death, establishing the remnant’s active preference.
The thread — The text’s focus on the banished remnant contrasts with the gathering promises in Jeremiah 23:3 and Jeremiah 29:14, while paralleling the death-seeking desperation of Revelation 9:6.
Why it lands — The text states that the exiled remnant will actively prefer death to life. It requires the reader to acknowledge how sustained rebellion can reverse the natural drive for survival into a deliberate embrace of ruin.
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
And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the Lord of hosts.
Cross-references
- Revelation 9:6 In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, but death will escape them.
- Jeremiah 29:14 I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore you from captivity and gather you from all the nations and places to which I have banished you, declares the LORD. I will restore you to the place from which I sent you into exile.”
- Jeremiah 23:3 Then I Myself will gather the remnant of My flock from all the lands to which I have banished them, and I will return them to their pasture, where they will be fruitful and multiply.
- Jeremiah 23:8 Instead they will say, ‘As surely as the LORD lives, who brought and led the descendants of the house of Israel up out of the land of the north and all the other lands to which He had banished them.’ Then they will dwell once more in their own land.”
- Deuteronomy 30:4 Even if you have been banished to the farthest horizon, He will gather you and return you from there.
- Job 7:15 so that I would prefer strangling and death over my life in this body.
- Deuteronomy 30:1 “When all these things come upon you—the blessings and curses I have set before you—and you call them to mind in all the nations to which the LORD your God has banished you,
- Daniel 9:7 To You, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but this day we are covered with shame—the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, and all Israel near and far, in all the countries to which You have driven us because of our unfaithfulness to You.
- Jonah 4:3 And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.”
- 1 Kings 19:4 while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He sat down under a broom tree and prayed that he might die. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.”