Tool Beta
Is It Actually in the Bible?
Phrases people quote as Scripture. The real verse, or the honest answer that there is not one.
"Be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them" (Jeremiah 1:17) sounds like God might merely confuse or baffle Jeremiah.
"Confound" in the KJV meant "put to shame" or "utterly dismay," not simply to puzzle or confuse.
Jeremiah 1:17, in every translation this tool compares.
God is warning Jeremiah that if he loses his nerve before his opponents, God will let him be humiliated before them: "confound" here pairs with "dismay" to mean shame and defeat, not intellectual confusion. Psalm 71 uses "confounded" the same way, directly alongside "brought unto shame."
"Confound" comes from Latin confundere, "to pour together, to ruin," and in 1611 still carried that stronger sense of being utterly overthrown or disgraced, a meaning the modern, softer "confusing" has mostly displaced.
