What Does Jeremiah 47:5 Mean?
A shaved head comes upon Gaza. Ashkelon is silenced with the remnant of their valley. How long will you gash yourself?
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
Baldness is come upon Gaza; Ashkelon is cut off with the remnant of their valley: how long wilt thou cut thyself?THE KEY
The city’s exposed ruin and the body’s self-inflicted wound belong to one scene of devastation.
THE MEANING
Devastation takes a visible form: Gaza is stripped bare, Ashkelon is cut off, and the addressed one cuts herself. The question “How long?” remains inside the scene, where loss keeps reproducing itself through bodily injury.
THE ROOT
תִּתְגּוֹדָדִי
titgōdādî
GROWS FROM
גדד
To gash or cut; in this reflexive form, to cut oneself.
“gash yourself” in this verse is titgōdādî. The Hebrew makes the wound self-directed: the one addressed is not only surrounded by devastation but bears it on her own body. The root holds the act of bodily cutting beneath the English phrase “cut thyself.”
ALSO GROWS
gādad: To gash or cut oneself.
גָּדַד
This is the base verb behind the self-directed action in Jeremiah’s question.
titgōdĕdū: You cut yourselves.
תִּתְגֹּדְדוּ
Deuteronomy 14:1 uses the same root and reflexive form for the same bodily act.
קָרְחָה
qorḥāh
GROWS FROM
קרח
To become bald or bare.
“A shaved head” in this verse is qorḥāh. The Hebrew word names baldness as visible exposure. Gaza’s ruin is pictured as a covering stripped away, before the verse turns to the wound carried on the body.
ALSO GROWS
qērēaḥ: Bald or bare-headed.
קֵרֵחַ
This adjective describes the exposed condition named by the baldness that comes upon Gaza.
qāraḥ: To become bald.
קָרַח
This verb shares the root and makes baldness an action or resulting state, not just a label.
THE PATTERN
Public devastation is rendered through the body: loss exposes the head and turns grief into self-wounding.
You are the children of the LORD your God. You shall not gash yourselves, nor shave a bare place between your eyes for the dead.And they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lances, until the blood poured out upon them.Shave yourself bald, and shear your hair for your pampered children. Widen your baldness as the eagle, for they have been laid bare and led away from you.THE THREAD
You are the children of the LORD your God. You shall not gash yourselves, nor shave a bare place between your eyes for the dead.Deuteronomy pairs תִּתְגֹּדְדוּ (titgōdĕdū, cut yourselves), from גדד (gādad, gash), with קָרְחָה (qorḥāh, baldness), the same baldness word that opens Jeremiah’s verse. The shared pair places bodily self-wounding and the city’s exposed ruin in one scene.
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