What Does Jeremiah 30:12 Mean?
For thus says the LORD, Your breaking is incurable, and your wound is grievous.
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
For thus saith the LORD, Thy bruise is incurable, and thy wound is grievous.THE KEY
Under “bruise” is a fracture, and the “grievous” wound is described with the language of sickness.
THE MEANING
The verse meets the reader where what is broken seems past repair: it names the break as incurable and the wound as gravely sick. It gives the injury its full weight.
THE ROOT
לְשִׁבְרֵךְ
lishivrekh
GROWS FROM
שבר
To break or shatter; a breaking, fracture, or ruin.
The Hebrew word carries the sense of a breaking or fracture beneath the English “bruise.” It gives the injury a structural depth, while the verse calls that break incurable.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
This verb names the force behind the fracture in the verse.
shever: A breaking, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This noun shows how the same root can name both the act of breaking and the broken condition.
מַכָּתֵךְ
makkatekha
GROWS FROM
נכה
To strike or smite.
The Hebrew word for wound holds the blow within the injury’s name. The wound is described through the force that struck, not only as a mark left behind.
ALSO GROWS
nakah: To strike or smite.
נָכָה
This verb names the impact carried inside the word for wound.
makkah: A blow, wound, or plague.
מַכָּה
This noun shows how the root names the injury produced by a strike.
נַחֲלָה
nahalah
GROWS FROM
חלה
To be sick, weak, or ill.
The word translated “grievous” uses the language of sickness. The wound is not only severe; it is described as sick.
ALSO GROWS
chalah: To be sick or weak.
חָלָה
This verb supplies the sickness at the center of the verse’s description.
choleh: Sick or ill.
חוֹלֶה
This form makes the connection between the wound’s severity and the language of illness plain.
machalah: Illness or sickness.
מַחֲלָה
This noun carries the same root’s sense of sickness as a condition.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names brokenness in bodily terms, and its healing language meets those wounds directly.
From the sole of the foot to the head there is no unbroken place in it, but wounds, welts, and fresh blows. They have not been closed, nor bound up, nor softened with oil.He mends the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
For I will bring up healing for you, and I will heal you of your wounds, declares the LORD, for they called you the driven away, saying, This is Zion, no one seeks her.Verse 17 uses the same wound-family, מַכָּה (makkah, a blow or wound), rooted in נכה (nakah, to strike), that names the wound here. The promise of healing addresses the same injury named as grievous, holding its severity and the possibility of healing together.
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