What Does Jeremiah 16:6 Mean?
Both the great and the small shall die in this land. They shall not be buried, and no one shall wail for them, nor gash themselves, nor shave themselves for them.
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
Both the great and the small shall die in this land: they shall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them:THE KEY
The deepest loss is communal: even death is stripped of burial and public grief, the acts by which the living bear witness.
THE MEANING
The great and the small meet the same death, and the verse names what is withheld afterward: burial, lament, and the bodily marks of grief. It confronts the reader with a rupture in which death receives no shared farewell and rank gives no shelter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that prominence can place someone beyond death or guarantee that others will publicly honor their loss.
THE ROOT
יִסְפְּדוּ
yispedu
GROWS FROM
ספד
To mourn or wail.
“wail for them” in this verse is yispedu. The Hebrew names an enacted act of mourning, not only an inward feeling. Its related forms show lament as something voiced and shared, so withholding it leaves the dead without communal witness.
ALSO GROWS
misped: lamentation, mourning
מִסְפֵּד
This noun from the same root makes the public expression of grief explicit.
sophed: one who mourns, a mourner
סוֹפֵד
The mourner is named through the same root as the lament, joining the person grieving to the act the verse says will not occur.
יִקָּבֵרוּ
yikkaveru
GROWS FROM
קבר
To bury, to place in a grave.
“buried” in this verse is yikkaveru. The passive form leaves the human act in view: no one lays these bodies in a grave. The root links the act of burial to the grave itself, so what is withheld is both a final resting place and the care of those who would provide it.
ALSO GROWS
qever: grave, burial place
קֶבֶר
The grave is the place named by the same root as the burial denied here.
qevurah: burial, interment
קְבוּרָה
This noun names the act itself, making clear that the verse withholds a communal deed, not merely a state.
THE PATTERN
Burial and lamentation make death a shared, witnessed passage; their absence exposes a rupture in communal care.
And they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is across Jordan, and there they wailed a great lamentation, heavy beyond measure. And he made a mourning for his father seven days.And reverent men carried Stephen to his burial, and beat their breasts over him in great mourning.They pour out their blood like waters all around Jerusalem, and there is none to bury them.THE THREAD
Therefore says the LORD concerning Jehoiakim son of Josiah, the king of Judah. They shall not wail for him, saying, Ah my brother! or, Ah sister! They shall not wail for him, saying, Ah lord! or, Ah his majesty!This verse repeats the root ספד (saphad, “mourn”) and gives the withheld lament its words: cries of kinship and honor. That makes the silence in Jeremiah 16:6 wider, the shared voices of grief are absent across every rank.
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