Short Note: Did Jeremiah say God deceived him?

Koot van Wyk, (DLitt et Phil; ThD) Kyungpook National University, Department of Liberal Education, Sangju, South Korea; conjoint lecturer of Avondale College, Australia

The Problem in translations of Jeremiah 20:7a

Some translations give the impression in Jeremiah 20:7a that Jeremiah was complaining to God that He deceived him. This is a shocking theology attached to a man of God by later investigators.

“O Lord, Thou hast deceived me and I was deceived” (NASB) Jeremiah 20:7a

“O LORD, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived” (KJV)

⁷ (O) Lord, thou deceivedest me, and I am deceived (Wycliffe)

⁷ seduxisti me Domine et seductus sum fortior me (Latin of Jerome 398 A.D)

⁷ Tu m'as séduit, ô Eternel, et je me suis laissé séduire! (La Bible de Semeur)

⁷ Alucinásteme, oh Jehová, y hállome frustrado: (Reina-Valera Antiqua)

⁷ HERR, du hast mich überredet, und ich habe mich überreden lassen; (Luther 1545)

 ⁷Toen zei ik: "HERE, U overreedde mij toen U mij de opdracht gaf (Dutch HTB)

The original Hebrew of Jeremiah

      פִּתִּיתַ֤נִי יְהוָה֙ וָֽאֶפָּ֔ת       Leningrad Codex in Hebrew of Jeremiah 20:7a

Even in the presumed Masoretic Text English Translation of the following site the translation is also “deceived”.

http://ecmarsh.com/lxx-kjv/jeremiah/jer_020.htm

What should we do with this situation?

Simple. The root that is used twice in this sentence by Jeremiah is not the root for deceived although it was long misunderstood to be that meaning as we can see that Jerome in his Latin also used the word as translated in modern translations of the Vulgate.

http://www.latinvulgate.com/lv/verse.aspx?t=0&b=28&c=20

However, the word in the Vulgate can also be translated as “withdraw, to take away, to divide”. Here one must be careful whether scholars have chosen the right word here and put that word into the mouth of Jerome when he did not have that semantics in mind in the first place.

See for example John Calvin:

7 Thou hast deceived me, Jehovah, and I was deceived (John Calvin)

7. Decepisti me, Jehova, et deceptus sum; (John Calvin’s original Latin)

If Jerome had maybe in mind “withdraw”, Calvin definitely was using a different Dictionary for Hebrew and ended up with “deceive”.

The solution is Semantics.

Hebrew Dictionaries are not perfect. Many of our modern dictionaries are using Middle Age Arabic for the base root meaning and then guess their context from that base. Mostly for 90% of the words of the Bible there is no problem. However, for certain hapax legomena or rare words in the Bible, there are problems.

Jeremiah knew Egyptian since he spent time there and the root in Egyptian is the same as in Hebrew, Aramaic, Assyrian, Syriac, Arabic, namely: “open”.

Assyrian: pitû

Egyptian: pteḥ

Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic the same.

They all mean “to open”. Translate thus “O Lord, You have caused me to be opened and I was opened”

Theological Application and Correction

A prophet of the Bible will not say to God that He is deceiving him. All interpretations thus trying to do so needs reformulation, Calvin included. In his commentary on this verse, the Middle-Ages Rabbi Redak (1157-1236) said in his commentary on Jeremiah: "In this complaint, Jeremiah said nothing derogatory about the Lord." Rabbi Rashi (1040-1105) though, used in his Jeremiah commentary the translation: "You enticed me". It is possible that the origin of the wrong translation of this word [wrongly as enticed] originated from the Hebrew Lexicons written by people like Redak in his Hashoroshim "The Book of Roots" which is a lexicon of Hebrew words and their root meaning but many meanings were derived from Middle-age Arabic unfortunately.