What Does Jeremiah 22:23 Mean?
O one who settles in Lebanon, you who nest in the cedars, how favored shall you be when the cords come upon you, the writhing of a woman in labor!
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
O inhabitant of Lebanon, that makest thy nest in the cedars, how gracious shalt thou be when pangs come upon thee, the pain as of a woman in travail!THE KEY
The cedar nest looks secure from above, but the verse measures it against the body’s power to be seized by labor.
THE MEANING
You can build your nest high among cedars and still meet the hour when pangs seize the body. The verse sets visible shelter beside labor’s pain, refusing to let height stand in for immunity.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie it dissolves is that a high enough shelter makes you untouchable.
THE ROOT
חֲבָלִים
ḥăḇālîm
GROWS FROM
חבל
ḥ-b-l
To bind or cord; this word family also names pangs as constricting pressure.
“the cords” in this verse is ḥăḇālîm. Jeremiah’s word for pangs shares its root with the word for cords. Pain is more than a general condition here: it is pressure that binds and closes in, reaching even the one nested among cedars.
ALSO GROWS
ḥevel: Cord, rope
חֶבֶל
This tangible branch makes the pangs feel like something tightening or encircling the body.
ḥevlei mavet: Cords or pangs of death; rendered “sorrows of death” in Psalm 18:4
חֶבְלֵי מָוֶת
The same word-family describes death’s cords closing around someone, giving Jeremiah’s pangs the force of something that seizes and surrounds.
חִיל
ḥîl
GROWS FROM
חול
ḥ-w-l
To whirl or writhe; to tremble, travail, or bring forth.
“the writhing” in this verse is ḥîl. The word for pain belongs to a root of bodily motion: twisting, writhing, and laboring. English makes pain sound like a state; the Hebrew evokes a body in convulsion.
ALSO GROWS
māḥōl: Dance, whirling
מָחוֹל
The root family also names the body’s turning motion in dance; here that motion is labor’s painful writhing.
watteḥōlēl: You brought forth; used of bringing forth the earth in Psalm 90:2
וַתְּחוֹלֵל
The root can name bringing forth as well as travail, holding the motion of labor and birth together without making the pain gentle.
יֹלֵדָה
yōlĕdāh
GROWS FROM
ילד
y-l-d
To bear, give birth, or beget.
“a woman in labor” in this verse is yōlĕdāh. The Hebrew calls her a woman giving birth, not merely an image of pain. The comparison keeps the bodily labor in view, while the verse stays with its anguish.
ALSO GROWS
yālad: To bear or beget
יָלַד
This verb names the act at the center of the comparison: bringing forth.
yeled: Child
יֶלֶד
The same root names the child, linking the labor’s pain with what is being brought forth.
THE PATTERN
Labor becomes scripture’s image for distress that seizes the whole body, not an idea held at a distance.
As a woman with child who draws near to bring forth writhes and cries out in her cords, so we have been before your face, LORD.Trembling seized them there, and writhing, as of a woman in labor.When they say, "Wholeness and firm footing," then sudden ruin stands over them, like labor pains upon a woman carrying a child in her womb, and they will not escape.THE THREAD
The cords of death wrap around me, and torrents of those who do not rise startle me.The “sorrows” here are חֶבְלֵי מָוֶת, literally cords or pangs of death, sharing the root חבל with Jeremiah’s pangs. That root turns pain into something binding and surrounding, sharpening the contrast with the cedar nest that seems to promise shelter.
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