What Does Jeremiah 4:31 Mean?
For I have heard a voice like a woman writhing in labor, a narrowing like the breaking for her firstborn, the voice of the daughter of Zion, gasping, spreading her hands, saying, Woe is me now! For my living soul is faint in the face of slayers.
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 I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, that bewaileth herself, that spreadeth her hands, saying, Woe is me now! for my soul is wearied because of murderers.THE KEY
The verse makes anguish a narrowing pressure on a living self and names the murderers causing it.
THE MEANING
You hear a city crying through a laboring body; the verse does not turn that pain into a promise of birth. The hands spread, and the living self is worn down because murderers are present. The cause of the exhaustion stays named, not hidden inside a private weakness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Exhaustion is not proof that the living self is weak or defective; this verse names murderers as its cause.
THE ROOT
צָרָה
tsarah
GROWS FROM
צרר
tsarar
To bind or press in, to make narrow or constricted; hence, to be in distress.
צָרָה (tsarah, anguish) is more than private sadness: it is trouble experienced as narrowing pressure. The verse names murderers as the cause, keeping that pressure concrete.
ALSO GROWS
tsar: Narrow or tight; also an adversary or oppressor.
צַר
The same compressed image can name a narrow place or the one who hems someone in; here the verse explicitly names murderers.
metsar: A strait or narrow place; distress.
מֵצַר
Psalm 118:5 uses this word for distress and contrasts it with a large place, making the narrowing inside this verse audible.
חוֹלָה
cholah
GROWS FROM
חול
chul
To writhe, whirl, or be in labor.
“writhing in labor” in this verse is cholah. The comparison draws on a root of bodily turning and writhing. Its branch מָחוֹל (machol, dance) shares that movement family, but here the image keeps the pain embodied rather than making it redemptive.
ALSO GROWS
chul: To writhe, whirl, or be in labor.
חוּל
This root makes the woman’s travail a physical motion, not an abstract figure for sadness.
machol: Dance.
מָחוֹל
The shared motion-word shows how the root can name different bodily movements; Jeremiah uses it to make anguish visible in the body.
נַפְשִׁי
nafshi
GROWS FROM
נפש
n-p-sh
The living self or person; animate life.
נַפְשִׁי (nafshi, my living soul) is the speaker’s living self, not a detached inner object; that whole self is worn down under violence. The related verb נָפַשׁ (naphash, rest or be refreshed) makes the exhaustion tangible as depletion of the living self.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: Living soul, person, or self.
נֶפֶשׁ
This fuller form shows the range carried by the KJV’s word “soul”: the verse speaks of the whole living person.
naphash: To rest or be refreshed.
נָפַשׁ
Its relation to the living self sharpens the contrast: the speaker’s self is worn down, not refreshed.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives anguish a bodily voice through labor, groaning, and cry, so pain remains audible instead of abstract.
I have been silent for ages and held myself back. Now I will cry out like a woman in labor. I will be stunned and gasp at once.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.A woman, when she brings forth, has pain, because her hour has come. But when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the pressure, for the joy that a human has been brought forth into the world.THE THREAD
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.The KJV’s “in distress” is מֵצַר (metsar, narrow place), from the same צרר (tsarar, press in or bind) family as Jeremiah’s צָרָה (tsarah, anguish). The psalm answers with מֶרְחָב (merchav, broad place), making the movement from constriction to space audible while leaving Jeremiah’s murderers and grief fully named.
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