Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart for my holy purpose. I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.”

This is one of those verses you listen to all your life and then one day it just hits you.  Unfortunately it hit me while in church and I was following the Scripture reading for the morning with my Hebrew Bible.  I guess I didn’t get much out of the sermon for that day. Somehow I found I was not reading the same thing that the old boy up front was reading.

The first thing that struck me was the word used for before.  The word is beterem which is an adverb with a preposition attached.  It literally means “in but not yet.”  It sounds like before so translators go with that.  I think that is a coward’s way out.  I believe this is to be taken in the context of the next two words.  The next two words are the word formed which is repeated.  Many commentators say this is just the Semitic way of expressing an emphasis.  Yet, I tend to take a more Jewish approach to these two words and suggest that they are really two different words from two different roots and are meant to be translated as two different words.   If I just ignore the Masoretic text and looked at this passage as it was before 700 AD I would come up with something more profound than God just knowing Jeremiah before he was born.

The first use of the word for formed is ‘etsoreka and I have no problem with the root word being yatsar which means to form, fashion or mold.  In its Semitic origins it is a word that is used for a potter making a vessel.  However, this word is seemingly repeated. The following word is similar but not the same; it is the word ‘etsareka the difference being the deletion of the Vav.  I recently heard a rabbi explain that when a Vav is deleted from a word where there really should have been one it is an indication that the word is expressing an act without God.  Thus the first use of the word would indicate that God formed us, but with the word repeated without the Vav it would show that we also have a free will and we take an active part in this formation.  Thus before we were born God not only knew the perfect being He created but He also knew the flaws we would add to that formation through our sinful self-will.  That is an interesting thought.

Another reason for the repetition of the word is that they are really two different words coming from two different roots and both words were meant to be translated.  The first root word would be ‘atsak which would mean to form, create or imagine.  The following word could then come from the root word natsar which means to watch over and protect.  Thus God is saying that before he even imagined us, or created us in the womb He was watching over us and protecting us.  The use of natsar is also a subtle play on the word ‘atsar which means a treasure.  Hence before God even formed us in the womb we were a protected treasure.  That gives you something to think about when you consider the matter of abortion.

As I said, using the word before for beterem is a problem. The word before is an easy out. You see, there is no word in the English that is equivalent to beterm.   You need to take that word and sort of spread it out over the following phrase and let it absorb itself into the other words to create a meaning.  So my own personal rendering of this phrase would be: “While you were being formed  in the womb your were a protected treasure, I knew the hardships you would face as a prophet and even then I laid out a course of protection for you.”

Then God says: “Before you were born, I set you apart for a holy purpose.”  We again have the word beterem used as before.  Literally in the Hebrew we have: “Before you came forth from the womb, I set you apart.”   The word used for born is marchem which could mean from the womb, but the word is rooted in the word racham which is the word used for a romantic love.  It is used for a mother’s love, to love tenderly and compassionately. It is often rendered in English as tender mercies.  Racham is a reference to the womb in a metaphoric way.   I read in Jewish literature that a mother’s love is at its purest while the child is still in the womb because the child has not yet rebelled or challenged her love.  Her heart has not yet been wounded by the child’s rebellious nature.  In trying to find a proper use of the word beterem (before) what I come up with is this: “I have set you apart for a holy purpose even before you had a chance to do anything to wound my heart.”

Ok, here is what I think God is telling Jeremiah in this verse and what He might be telling us who also may feel a call upon our own lives.   There are times as we pursue our calling that it will seem like God has abandoned us, or has withdrawn his calling because of the difficult circumstances we may find ourselves in or because of our own rebellion.  But that calling was made while His love for us was in its purest state when we were His protected treasure.  Although we may have wounded His heart many times in our maturing process to arrive at our calling, from our very formation He laid out a plan to protect us, a divine insurance policy, that would be in effect no matter what our circumstances  or how we respond because we are His treasure.

When Jeremiah sat in that dark, damp prison suffering for the prophetic message God called him to give, He may have wondered what type of God he was serving to reward him with this type of treatment.  He could reflect on the words of God gave to Him: “From the beginning of time I knew my calling upon your life would bring you to this prison, just remember, I called you out of a heart that was the purest it could be. You were my protected treasure before you were even born and I am continuing to protect you.  You may not understand it now; just know this whole thing was birthed with a love that is as pure as it could be for a protected treasure.”