The word that means both an oracle and a load

There is a pun in Jeremiah that runs for eight verses and produces one of the strangest commands in the Bible: stop using this word.

The word is massa. It comes from the verb to lift or carry, and it has two settled meanings. A massa is a burden — a load on a donkey, a weight on a man’s shoulders. And a massa is an oracle — a prophetic utterance, so called because the voice is lifted up to deliver it.

Older English Bibles render it burden in the prophetic sense: the burden of Babylon, the burden of Damascus.

Two meanings, one word. And the people of Jerusalem had found the joke.

What is the burden of the LORD? is a legitimate question — what is the oracle, what is the message. But it had become a sneer. Ask the prophet what today’s load is. What weight is he carrying around this week.

And God’s answer takes the pun back and turns it on them: You are the burden, and I will cast you off.

Then the command that follows is unusual enough to be worth quoting.

You must no longer mention the burden of the LORD. Stop saying it. Say instead, What has the LORD answered? or What has the LORD spoken?

That is worth sitting with, because it is not about vocabulary at all. Every word the prophets used was available to be used sincerely. This one had been worn down by repetition into something you said when you were tired of hearing from God.

And the verses around it say what was actually going on. They were telling each other their own dreams and calling them the word of the LORD. They were leading God’s people astray with reckless lies. The phrase had become the packaging for content God had not sent.

So He removes the packaging.

The double meaning is still worth carrying, because both halves are true when the word is used honestly. A message from God is an utterance, and it is a load. The prophets who carried real ones found them heavy — Jeremiah said so a chapter after chapter, and Week Eleven had him unable to hold it in.

And the substitutes God supplies are worth noticing. Say instead, What has the LORD answered? or What has the LORD spoken? Both are questions, and both put the burden of proof back on whoever claims to be carrying a message. That is the correction: not a better phrase, but a phrasing that can be checked.

There is a plain application, and it is uncomfortable in any generation. Religious vocabulary wears out. Phrases that once meant something get used as filler, or as a way to end an argument, or to lend weight to an opinion. When that happens, Jeremiah 23 says the problem is not the phrase.

Massa as a prophetic term heads a number of oracles in Isaiah 13–23, Nahum 1:1, Habakkuk 1:1, Zechariah 9:1 and Malachi 1:1. Translations render it variously as burden, oracle, or pronouncement, and the choice affects the tone considerably.

The same noun in its ordinary sense appears throughout the Law for loads carried by animals and men, and in Numbers 4 for the Levites’ assigned burdens in transporting the tabernacle. The overlap is not a coincidence of sound; both senses come from the one verb, to lift.

Jeremiah 23 is the chapter this volume met in Week One, where God’s word is fire and a hammer, and again in Week Eight, where it supplies the test for false prophets. All three uses come from one sustained indictment of men who claimed to speak for God and did not.

The penalty stated in verses 39–40 continues the pun: I will surely lift you up and cast you away from My presence — using the verb behind the noun. The people who made a joke of the word for lifting are told they will be lifted.

The chapter also contains one of the sharpest lines in the prophets on this subject: let the prophet who has a dream tell his dream, but let the one who has My word speak it faithfully. What has straw to do with grain? God does not forbid the dream; He forbids confusing it with the grain.

Look it upH4853 מַשָּׂא massa, burden, oracle · H5375 נָשָׂא nasa, to lift, carry, bear · H2472 חֲלוֹם chalom, dream · H8267 שֶׁקֶר sheqer, falsehood, lie

Then read Matthew 11:28–30, where the one who calls the heavy laden to Himself says His own burden is light. The word for burden there is different, but the reversal is exact: the message that was a load becomes rest.

Where this touchesJeremiah 23:9–40 (Week One, Day Two; Week Eight, Day Three) · Isaiah 13:1 · Nahum 1:1 · Malachi 1:1 · Numbers 4:15–33 · Matthew 11:28–30. The earlier word studies were dabar, theopneustos, logos, torah, graphe, emeth, amen, the messenger formula, sepher, edut, imrah and logia.