What Does Jeremiah 10:19 Mean?
Woe is me for my breaking! My wound is grievous. But I said, Surely this is my sickness, and I must bear it.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Woe is me for my hurt! my wound is grievous: but I said, Truly this is a grief, and I must bear it.THE KEY
The Hebrew uses one sickness root for “grievous” and “grief,” joining the wound and the sorrow in a single illness.
THE MEANING
Your hurt is a break; your wound is grievous, and the grief is named as sickness that you bear. The verse holds the pain in its bodily reality and in the weight it lays on you.
THE ROOT
נַחְלָה
naḥlāh
GROWS FROM
חלה
To be sick, weak, or afflicted.
The word rendered “grievous” describes the wound as becoming sick, and “grief” is named with the noun for sickness. The English words separate the wound from the sorrow; the shared root holds them together as one affliction.
ALSO GROWS
naḥlāh: Became sick or was afflicted.
נַחְלָה
This is the verb translated “grievous”: the wound itself is described as becoming sick.
ḥŏlî: Sickness or illness.
חֳלִי
This is the noun translated “grief,” giving the lament’s sorrow the language of illness.
שִׁבְרִי
shivrî
GROWS FROM
שבר
To break or shatter.
The word for “my hurt” carries the image of a break. Its root names both the act of breaking and the fracture left behind, so the lament begins with rupture, not a vague discomfort.
ALSO GROWS
shāvar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The noun for “my hurt” grows from this verb of breaking.
shever: A break, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This related noun makes the damage of the breaking visible in the word for hurt.
וְאֶשָּׂאֶנּוּ
ve’esā’ennu
GROWS FROM
נשא
To lift, carry, or take up.
“bear” in this verse is ve’esā’ennu. The final verb keeps the affliction in view as a load being carried. The verse does not call the load light; it lets the burden stand beside the grief.
ALSO GROWS
nāśāʾ: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This is the verb behind “I must bear it,” framing the affliction as something carried.
maśśāʾ: A burden or load.
מַשָּׂא
This related noun for a burden comes from the same carrying root, making the weight in the verse concrete.
THE PATTERN
Lament names affliction plainly and lets its full weight remain in view.
I am struck and crushed exceedingly, and I roar from the churning of my heart.Therefore I do not hold back my mouth. I speak in the narrow place of my breath; I murmur in the bitterness of my living soul.Then he said to them, My living soul is pained all around, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.THE THREAD
He is despised and left off by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. And as one hiding the face, we hid our faces from him. He was despised, and we did not reckon him.The Hebrew word translated “grief” here is חֳלִי (ḥŏlî), the same sickness word at the heart of Jeremiah’s lament. Its recurrence lets both verses name sorrow with the language of bodily affliction.
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