Jeremiah 13:23 · World English Bible
Jeremiah 13:23 Meaning Can the Ethiopian Change His Skin
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may you also do good, who are accustomed to do evil.
What does Jeremiah 13:23 mean?
Repeat a behavior long enough and it stops being a choice you make and becomes a capacity you have. A belief held long enough stops getting argued with and starts getting obeyed.
From the Self-Help reading below.
Jeremiah 13:23 through 1 lens
The same verse, read by one tradition.
Self-Help
SELF-HELP
Self-Help
Repeat a behavior long enough and it stops being a choice you make and becomes a capacity you have.
A belief held long enough stops getting argued with and starts getting obeyed. It sets the state before the day begins, the state issues the same emotion on schedule, the emotion drives the same conduct, and years of that conduct compound into a range so narrow it passes for nature.
God says this to a people he is still addressing, which makes it a diagnosis and not a sentence. Leverage was never available at the behavior. It sits at the front, in the conviction that made the behavior look obvious, and the price of reaching it climbs with every year it goes unchallenged.
Self-Help lensGo deeper in the app
Self-Help lens
Live Jeremiah 13:23 today
- Catch one thing you say about yourself as though it were simply a fact, I am not a morning person, I am bad with money. Ask when you first believed it and whether it has been tested lately.
- Tell one person about a pattern you keep repeating, and ask them what they think is underneath it. Other people can often see the belief you are too close to read.
- When today's familiar reaction fires, the snap at the kid, the second hour of scrolling, stop and ask what you must have believed a second before it. The belief is where the handle is.
What have you been calling your nature when it is really just a conviction you stopped questioning?
The same truth in other traditions
Buddhism · Dhammapada
What you are now came out of what you thought, and what you become will come out of what you think today. The thought wears the groove, and the groove becomes the road.
Hinduism · Patanjali
The deep impressions left by repeated action run the mind without asking. Freedom is not fought at the action, it is won where the impression was formed.
Stoicism · Marcus Aurelius
The soul takes the color of its habitual thoughts. Dye it long enough with one shade and you will call that shade your nature.
Free · No account needed
Read all of Jeremiah 13 through 17 lenses
Lensightful opens every verse of the Bible through the traditions you choose. Save readings, ask a follow-up question, and get one verse a day.
Get Lensightful on the App Store