What Does Jeremiah 48:1 Mean?
Against Moab thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel. Woe to Nebo, for it is ravaged. Kiriathaim is shamed and seized, and Misgab is shamed and shattered.
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
Against Moab thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Woe unto Nebo! for it is spoiled: Kiriathaim is confounded and taken: Misgab is confounded and dismayed.THE KEY
Misgab means a height or stronghold, yet it is shamed and dismayed alongside the cities, the place that sounds safest shares their collapse.
THE MEANING
Nebo is devastated, Kiriathaim is captured, and Misgab, the height or stronghold, is shamed and dismayed. The verse holds the reader close to a collapse that reaches from settled place to elevated refuge, where even height offers no shelter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a high place or stronghold guarantees safety is undone: Misgab itself is shamed and dismayed.
THE ROOT
שֻׁדָּדָה
shuddadah
GROWS FROM
שדד
shadad
To devastate, plunder, or strip by force.
“ravaged” in this verse is shuddadah. The word translated “spoiled” carries the force of violent stripping and plunder. Its root family names both the violence and the plunderer, presenting Moab’s loss as an active devastation rather than an abstract decline.
ALSO GROWS
shod: Violence, devastation, or plunder.
שֹׁד
This noun keeps violence inside the description of being spoiled: the place is ravaged.
shoded: A plunderer or destroyer.
שׁוֹדֵד
This related form makes the force behind the devastation visible: something is being done to Moab.
הֹבִישָׁה
hovishah
GROWS FROM
בוש
bosh
To be ashamed or disappointed; to have hope fail.
“shamed” in this verse is hovishah. The same shame-word falls on Kiriathaim and Misgab, joining the captured city and the high refuge in one exposure. The repetition shows both places sharing the same condition of shame and failed security.
ALSO GROWS
busha: Shame or disgrace.
בּוּשָׁה
The noun makes explicit the public disgrace contained in the word translated “confounded.”
hevish: To put to shame, disappoint, or frustrate.
הֵבִישׁ
This related form shows how the verse’s collapse brings expectations of safety to nothing.
מִשְׂגָּב
misgav
GROWS FROM
שגב
sagav
To be high, elevated, or out of reach; by extension, to be secure.
Misgab’s name carries the sense of a height or refuge, the very claim that the verse exposes. The root’s association with being raised or out of reach meets a scene where height cannot prevent shame and dismay.
ALSO GROWS
sagav: To be high, elevated, or inaccessible.
שָׂגַב
The verb supplies the image carried in Misgab’s name: a place set above or beyond reach.
misgav: A high refuge or stronghold.
מִשְׂגָּב
The place-name holds the promise of shelter in its meaning, while the verse shows that refuge failing.
THE PATTERN
Elevation, power, and fortification cannot shelter a place when it is brought down.
And the high place of your walls he will bring low, lay flat, and touch the ground, even to the dust.Though you lift yourself high as the eagle, and though you set your nest among the stars, from there I will bring you down, says the LORD.He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.THE THREAD
The burden of Moab. For in the night Ar of Moab is ravaged and silenced; for in the night Kir of Moab is ravaged and silenced.“Laid waste” and “spoiled” draw on the same Hebrew root, שדד (shadad), meaning to devastate or plunder. Both verses name Moab and repeat the same image of violent loss, letting Jeremiah’s single warning open into a wider landscape of devastation.
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