What Does Jeremiah 14:2 Mean?
Judah mourns, and her gates droop; they have gone dark to the earth, and the cry of Jerusalem has risen.
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
Judah mourneth, and the gates thereof languish; they are black unto the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem is gone up.THE KEY
Jerusalem’s name carries wholeness, yet its gates darken and its cry rises: grief does not erase the city’s nature.
THE MEANING
Grief is not private here: it reaches the city’s gates, its thresholds, and darkens the ground. Jerusalem carries the sound of שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness), yet the city cries; the verse holds distress inside the name without making that distress unreal. Its cry rises, making the city’s pain impossible to keep beneath the surface.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Wholeness means a person or community cannot grieve.
THE ROOT
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
sh-l-m
To be whole or complete; the root behind שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness).
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The city’s name carries the sound of shalom (שָׁלוֹם, wholeness), from the root שלם (sh-l-m, to be whole). That makes its cry piercing: the name associated with wholeness does not deny the city’s grief.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, completeness
שָׁלוֹם
The name Jerusalem carries this sound while the city itself cries out in distress.
shalem: Whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
The root names wholeness as a nature, not as an emotion that grief can disprove.
קָדְרוּ
qāderû
GROWS FROM
קדר
q-d-r
To grow dark or become darkened; also used for mourning.
“gone dark to the earth” in this verse is qāderû. English gives a picture of color, while the Hebrew root also carries the language of mourning. The ground-level darkness is not scenery alone: grief becomes visible across the city.
ALSO GROWS
qādar: To grow dark, become darkened
קָדַר
This is the action behind the gates being described as black.
qōdēr: Darkened; mourning
קֹדֵר
The same word family joins visible darkness with the state of mourning.
עָלָתָה
ʿālātāh
GROWS FROM
עלה
ʿ-l-h
To rise, ascend, or go up.
“has risen” in this verse is ʿālātāh. The cry is described with a motion word: it rises. This root also forms words for ascent and for something that goes up, so the city’s grief is voiced as movement rather than contained silence.
ALSO GROWS
ʿăliyyāh: Ascent; an upper chamber
עֲלִיָּה
The word keeps the root’s sense of rising or going upward.
ʿōlāh: A burnt offering; that which goes up
עֹלָה
It shares the same root of ascent, echoing the upward movement of Jerusalem’s cry.
THE PATTERN
When deprivation reaches a whole community, the land itself shares the grief and the cry becomes collective.
The earth mourns and withers, the world languishes and withers away, and the heights of the people of the earth droop.The field is ravaged, the ground mourns; for the grain is ravaged; the new wine withers, the oil wilts.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
The field is ravaged, the ground mourns; for the grain is ravaged; the new wine withers, the oil wilts.Joel uses the root אָבַל (ʾābal, mourn) for the land’s grief, and אָמַל (ʾāmal, languish) for the oil that withers. What Jeremiah shows in Judah’s gates and Jerusalem’s cry, Joel shows in the fields: deprivation spreads through the whole community.
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