te'alah

Water in the ancient world did not simply arrive where it was wanted. Someone had to cut a course for it. That cut course is what this word names, and it is what sets the word apart from a natural stream bed (אָפִיק) or a valley that runs only after rain (נַחַל). Those already exist in the landscape. This one is made.

The word covers three kinds of made channel:

• the built conduit that brought water into Jerusalem, a landmark so well known that both a prophet on an errand from God and an enemy officer demanding surrender are placed beside "the conduit of the upper pool"
• the trench Elijah dug in a ring around his altar on Carmel and filled with water before the fire fell
• the watercourse that carries water across open ground, whether the one cut in the sky so a cloudburst can reach the earth or the ones running out among the trees in Ezekiel's vision of a great cedar

English Bibles are right to choose a different word each time: conduit here, trench there, channel elsewhere. What that costs is the thread. A city's water supply, a ditch around an altar, and the path a rainstorm takes are one word in Hebrew, and each is a case of water being given somewhere to go.

This meaning turns up twice, both times in Jeremiah, and both times in the same flat verdict: you have gathered up medicines, and there is no healing for you. He says it first to Judah and then to Egypt.

The picture behind the word is a wound that closes. Hebrew often describes recovery as new flesh coming up over an injury, and this word belongs with that image, as does another word Jeremiah uses in the same way (אֲרוּכָה). It does not name the treatment. It names the mending that treatment is supposed to produce, which is why it stands next to the word for medicines (רְפֻאָה) rather than taking its place.

That distinction carries the force of the line. The remedies are real and plentiful. The wound stays open.