What Does Jeremiah 14:17 Mean?
And you shall say this word to them, Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not fall silent; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breaking, with a very grievous wound.
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
Therefore thou shalt say this word unto them; Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease: for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous blow.THE KEY
The breach and the broken people are named by the same Hebrew root, so the grief is part of the rupture’s truth, not an overreaction to it.
THE MEANING
Your eyes can keep grieving when the wound in your people is still present; this verse does not rush sorrow toward closure. It names the damage as both a break and a blow, giving the ache its full scale.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that grief must end on schedule while the breach remains.
THE ROOT
שֶׁבֶר
shever
GROWS FROM
שׁבר
To break, shatter, or fracture.
The verse places the noun shever beside the verb nishberah, repeating the same three consonants: the breach and the people broken by it belong to one image. The grief stays awake because the breaking is not shown as mended.
ALSO GROWS
shever: A break, ruin, or breach.
שֶׁבֶר
This is the word translated “breach,” naming the wound itself as a fracture.
nishberah: Has been broken; the feminine passive form of the verb shavar.
נִשְׁבְּרָה
The same root describes the people as broken, binding the breach to the condition of the one who bears it.
THE PATTERN
When a people is shattered, grief remains a truthful response to the wound.
For the breaking of the daughter of my people I am broken; I am darkened; desolation has grasped me.My eyes run out in tears. My bowels boil. My liver is poured out upon the earth for the breaking of the daughter of my people, because the children and the nursing ones faint in the streets of the city.And when he drew near, perceiving the city, he wept over it.THE THREAD
My eyes run out in tears. My bowels boil. My liver is poured out upon the earth for the breaking of the daughter of my people, because the children and the nursing ones faint in the streets of the city.Jeremiah calls the people’s breach shever; Lamentations uses that same Hebrew root for their destruction. The shared word links the tears to the break itself: the grief registers the wound rather than looking away from it.
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