Jeremiah 23:40

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

and I will bring an everlasting reproach on you, and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Highlights

1 hapax legomenon — only here in the Hebrew Bible
1 first appearance in the Hebrew Bible

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Word by word

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וּכְלִמּ֣וּת

kᵉlimmûwth

H3640

“and · shame of”

Conjunction + Noun, Common, Feminine, Singular, Construct

Appears 1× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears here

Full BDB Definition

Origin: from H3639

TWOT: 987b

shame, disgrace, ignominy

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

9: words
8: distinct lemmas
Prophets: section

Notable vocabulary

1 hapax legomenon — a word that appears only here in the entire Hebrew Bible:

וּכְלִמּ֣וּת shame H3640

First appearance in Scripture

This word makes its first canonical appearance in the Hebrew Bible here:

וּכְלִמּ֣וּת shame H3640

Grammatical profile

2 verbs
4 nouns
1 preposition
2 particles

Verb forms

וְנָתַתִּ֥י Qal · Sequential Perfect
תִשָּׁכֵֽחַ Niphal · Imperfect

Repetition

A word recurs within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

עוֹלָ֑ם forever H5769 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In the original languages it is 9 Hebrew tokens and 12 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Jeremiah 23:40 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Jeremiah 20:11 But Yahweh is with me as an awesome mighty one: therefore my persecutors shall stumble, and they shall not prevail; they shall be utterly disappointed, because they have not dealt wisely, even with an everlasting dishonor which shall never be forgotten.
Ezekiel 5:14–15 Moreover I will make you a desolation and a reproach among the nations that are round about you, in the sight of all that pass by.
Jeremiah 42:18 For thus says Yahweh of Hosts, the God of Israel: As my anger and my wrath has been poured forth on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so shall my wrath be poured forth on you, when you shall enter into Egypt; and you shall be an object of horror, and an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach; and you shall see this place no more.
Deuteronomy 28:37 You shall become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among all the peoples where Yahweh shall lead you away.
Jeremiah 24:9 I will even give them up to be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth for evil; to be a reproach and a proverb, a taunt and a curse, in all places where I shall drive them.
Jeremiah 44:8–12 in that you provoke me to anger with the works of your hands, burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt, where you are gone to sojourn; that you may be cut off, and that you may be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth?
Daniel 9:16 Lord, according to all your righteousness, let your anger and please let your wrath be turned away from your city Jerusalem, your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and your people are become a reproach to all who are round about us.
Daniel 12:2 Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.

Hosea 4:7 As they were multiplied, so they sinned against me. I will change their glory into shame.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Jeremiah 23:40 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְנָתַתִּ֥י עֲלֵיכֶ֖ם חֶרְפַּ֣ת עוֹלָ֑ם וּכְלִמּ֣וּת עוֹלָ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֖ר לֹ֥א תִשָּׁכֵֽחַ

and I will bring an everlasting reproach on you, and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Structure differs

In the Septuagint, Jeremiah is about an eighth shorter than the Hebrew and arranges its material differently — the Oracles Against the Nations (Hebrew chapters 46–51) appear in the middle of the Greek book, after 25:13. Because the chapter and verse boundaries do not line up, a verse-for-verse comparison with the Hebrew is not shown.

A verse-for-verse comparison isn’t shown here because the chapters and verses don’t line up. Switch to the LXX edition with the MT / LXX toggle above to read the Greek directly.

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from a public-domain English Septuagint. How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וְאֶתֵּן עֲלֵיכוֹן חִסוּדֵי עֲלַם וְתַחְפִינוּן אִתְכַּנְעוּת עֲלַם דְלָא תִפְסוֹק:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Jeremiah 23:40 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Jer 23:40 And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you, and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten.

Ver. 40. And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you.] Contempt of the Word is such an enraging sin that God cannot easily satisfy himself in saying what he will do to such as are guilty of it.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

23:40 The false prophets would be an object of ridicule. Their predictions would be proved false when Jerusalem was destroyed and the people of the city were taken into exile.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

not be forgotten--If we translate Jer 23:39 as English Version, the antithesis is, though I forget you, your shame shall not be forgotten.

Next: Jeremiah Chapter 24

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Adam Clarke's Commentary

Verse 40. I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you] And this reproach of having rebelled against so good a God, and rejected so powerful a Saviour, follows them to this day through all their dispersions, in every part of the habitable earth. The word of the Lord cannot fail.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

John Calvin's Commentaries

What is here contained is, that though the Jews justly gloried for a time in being the peculiar people of God, yet this would avail them nothing, as they had divested themselves of that honor in which they had excelled, by the abnegation of true religion. Here then the Prophet strips the Jews of that foolish boasting with which they were inflated when they said that they were the people of God, and threatens that God having taken away their glory would make them lie under perpetual shame.

We at the same time know, that such threatenings are to be restricted as to time, they extend only to the coming of Christ; for the Church of God could not have been doomed to eternal reproach. But as to hypocrites, as there was no repentance, so they never obtained pardon; but God delivered his own from eternal reproach when Christ the Redeemer appeared; yet these words are to be understood as rightly addressed to the ungodly despisers of God. Now follows, —

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

John Gill's Exposition

And I will bring an everlasting reproach upon you,.... Which was a just retaliation for reproaching, vilifying, and bantering his word: they who had been honoured so much and so long as the people of God, and their city counted the glory of the earth; yet now both they and that should be the byword of the people, and had in the utmost contempt, and that for ever, or at least a long time, even for a series of ages; which has been their case ever since their destruction by the Romans, and still is; for this cannot be restrained to the short captivity of seventy years in Babylon; though this reproach began then, and they never recovered their former honour and glory;

and a perpetual shame, which shall not be forgotten; the same thing in different words, to heighten their disgrace, and confirm the perpetuity of it.

Next: Jeremiah Chapter 24

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

And you shall be a reproach, and that not for a few days, but for ever; and a penal shame, which neither you nor those that see or hear of it shall forget. See such expressions Jer 20:11.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

With this verse, comp. Jer_20:11.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Jeremiah, in the Prophets, opens this verse with 9 words (8 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is kᵉlimmûwth (“shame”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

What does “shame” (kᵉlimmûwth) contribute to the verse as a whole?
This verse holds 1 word here found nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. What might the rare word draw attention to?
The word “shame” first appears here in Scripture. What is being introduced at this debut?
Jeremiah 20:11 shares this passage’s theme. How do the two illuminate each other?
“forever” occurs 2× in this one verse. What is the effect of the repetition?
These translations render this verse differently; the difference is in the English rendering, not the original. What questions does that raise?
The verb «וְנָתַתִּ֥י» is Qal Sequential Perfect. How does its form color the action?
Reading how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Tyndale Open Study Notes read this verse, where do the two commentators agree and where do they part?

Things to notice

1 word in this verse appears nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible.
1 word makes its first canonical appearance in Scripture here.
This verse counts 9 Hebrew ↔ 12 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 6 words in this verse.
“forever” occurs 2× in this single verse.