What Does Jeremiah 25:10 Mean?
Moreover, I will take from them the voice of leaping, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp.
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
Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle.THE KEY
The verse makes devastation audible: the same Hebrew word names both the voices of joy and marriage and the grinding sound of daily life before they fall silent.
THE MEANING
This verse depicts ruin reaching into the daily texture of life: shared joy and marriage go silent, the millstones stop, and the lamp goes dark. The loss is communal and material as well as emotional; what vanishes is the sound and light of an inhabited home.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that disaster can be confined to public life while the ordinary rhythms of home remain untouched is undone here.
THE ROOT
קוֹל
qol
GROWS FROM
קול
Voice or sound: what is heard.
“voice / sound” in this verse is qol. The verse repeats qol five times: the KJV renders it as “voice” for rejoicing and marriage, then as “sound” for the millstones. One Hebrew word gathers human celebration and household work into the same soundscape, so its disappearance reaches beyond private feeling into daily life.
ALSO GROWS
qol sason: Voice of rejoicing
קוֹל שָׂשׂוֹן
This phrase makes joy something shared and audible, among the first sounds the verse removes.
qol reḥayim: Sound of millstones
קוֹל רֵחַיִם
The same word reaches from celebration to the work of grinding grain, bringing ordinary household life into the silence.
שָׂשׂוֹן
sason
GROWS FROM
שוש
To rejoice or exult.
“leaping” in this verse is sason. Mirth belongs to the Hebrew family of rejoicing, not merely amusement. Isaiah uses another form from this same root for mirth that ceases, linking the loss here to a wider scriptural image of celebration going quiet.
ALSO GROWS
sus: Rejoice, exult
שׂוּשׂ
The verb shows the active rejoicing carried within the noun for mirth.
mesos: Rejoicing, mirth
מְשׂוֹשׂ
Isaiah uses this related form for the mirth that ceases, echoing the silencing in Jeremiah.
וְהַאֲבַדְתִּי
wehaʾavadti
GROWS FROM
אבד
To perish or be lost; in this causative form, to cause something to perish or disappear.
The verb behind “take from them” carries the force of causing to perish or be lost. It gives the removal a sharper edge: the verse describes these sounds and lights vanishing from the people’s lives, not simply being transferred elsewhere.
ALSO GROWS
avad: Perish, be lost
אָבַד
This basic form shows the loss contained in the verb translated “take from.”
avaddon: Destruction
אֲבַדּוֹן
This related noun shows how the root extends from being lost toward destruction.
THE PATTERN
When judgment empties a community, its arrival is heard in the end of shared celebration and ordinary household rhythms.
And I will overturn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation. I will bring sackcloth up upon all loins, and a shaved head upon every head. I will make it like the mourning of an only son, and its end like a bitter day.And the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in you; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in you; for your traders were the great ones of the earth; for by your potions all nations were made to wander.THE THREAD
The leaping of the tambourines rests, the roar of those who leap is stilled, the joy of the lyre rests.Isaiah’s word for “mirth,” מְשׂוֹשׂ (mesos), comes from the same root שוש as Jeremiah’s שָׂשׂוֹן (sason). Both verses make the end of rejoicing audible, revealing the shared root beneath two English renderings.
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