What Does Jeremiah 19:10 Mean?
Then you will shatter the flask before the eyes of the men who go with you.
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
Then shalt thou break the bottle in the sight of the men that go with thee,THE KEY
The vessel’s name echoes emptying, so its public shattering turns what can be poured out into a visible image of ruin.
THE MEANING
The verse makes the break public: the bottle shatters before witnesses rather than in secret. Its name echoes emptying, so the image holds both the collapse of a container and the loss of what it can hold. It speaks now of ruin brought into full view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that destruction can always remain hidden: here, the break happens in front of witnesses.
THE ROOT
וְשָׁבַרְתָּ
wəšābartā
GROWS FROM
שבר
To break, fracture, or shatter.
“shatter” in this verse is wəšābartā. English “break” can sound like a single action, but שבר (sh-b-r; shavar, break) also names a fracture that leaves a breach. The same verb appears in the next verse, where the broken vessel cannot be made whole again.
ALSO GROWS
shever: A break, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This branch makes the verb’s deeper force visible: the action creates a breach, not just a momentary interruption.
nishbar: Broken or fractured.
נִשְׁבָּר
The broken state is the result carried by the verb, connecting the public act to the vessel’s lasting condition.
הַבַּקְבֻּק
habbaqbuq
GROWS FROM
בקק
To empty or pour out; by extension, to lay waste.
The noun בַּקְבֻּק (baqbuq, bottle) is commonly connected with בקק (b-q-q; baqaq, empty or pour out). The verse therefore joins the vessel with the idea of emptying: when it shatters, its capacity to hold is lost in plain sight.
ALSO GROWS
baqaq: To empty or pour out.
בָּקַק
This verb echoes in the bottle’s name, bringing the act of emptying into the image of the shattered vessel.
buqah: Emptiness or desolation, as in Nahum 2:10.
בּוּקָה
The same root can extend from an emptied vessel to a state of devastation, deepening the verse’s image of ruin.
THE PATTERN
The broken vessel makes collapse visible, whether it names personal desolation or a public verdict.
And you will say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts; Even so I will shatter this people and this city, as one shatters a potter's vessel that cannot be healed again. And they will bury them in Tophet, until there is no room to bury.I am forgotten like the dead, out of the heart; I am like a vessel that perishes.And he will shepherd them with an iron rod, as the vessels of a potter are shattered, as I also have taken from my Father.THE THREAD
And you will say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts; Even so I will shatter this people and this city, as one shatters a potter's vessel that cannot be healed again. And they will bury them in Tophet, until there is no room to bury.It repeats שבר (sh-b-r; shavar, break) and explains the bottle’s breaking as a rupture that cannot be made whole again. This verse makes the public act precise and names its unsoftened consequence.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us