What Does Jeremiah 48:29 Mean?
We have heard the swelling of Moab, who rises exceedingly. His swelling, and his lifting, and his height, and his heart raised high.
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
We have heard the pride of Moab, (he is exceeding proud) his loftiness, and his arrogancy, and his pride, and the haughtiness of his heart.THE KEY
Jeremiah’s repeated pride-language is one rising image: the heart makes itself high.
THE MEANING
Pride here swells into a whole posture: self-exaltation gathers into a heart that stands high over others. As you read, the words expose how the claim to be elevated can fill the inner life until it becomes the heart’s defining shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a high view of oneself proves true greatness; the verse names that elevation as pride.
THE ROOT
גְּאוֹן
ge'on
GROWS FROM
גאה
gʾh
To rise, be high, or exalt oneself.
English gives several labels for Moab’s pride, but the Hebrew repeats words from the same elevation family. That repetition makes pride feel like a swelling upward motion, with the heart’s height as its final expression.
ALSO GROWS
ge'eh: High, proud.
גֵּא
This word appears in the verse’s description of Moab as exceedingly proud, making the posture of height explicit.
ga'avah: Pride, exaltation.
גַּאֲוָה
This is the root behind “his arrogancy,” tying that label to the same rising movement.
ga'ah: To rise high or exalt oneself.
גָּאָה
The verb shows the motion beneath the verse’s repeated descriptions of pride.
גֹּבַהּ
govah
GROWS FROM
גבה
gbh
To be high or lofty.
“his height” in this verse is govah. The verse shifts from גאה (gʾh) to גבה (gbh): separate roots, but both mean being high and share the consonants gimel and he. That sound and meaning echo links arrogance with height, until the closing phrase makes the heart itself the elevated thing.
ALSO GROWS
gavah: To be high or exalted.
גָּבַהּ
The verb carries the same vertical sense as “loftiness,” making the verse’s image more than a figure of speech.
gavoah: High, lofty.
גָּבֹהַּ
This adjective shows how the root describes a state of elevation, matching the posture attributed to Moab.
higbiah: To raise or lift high.
הִגְבִּיהַּ
This causative form brings out the action of making something high, echoing the heart’s self-exaltation.
THE PATTERN
Scripture marks self-exaltation as a height that precedes or meets a lowering.
Swelling goes before breaking, and a breath lifted high goes before a stumbling.The lifted eyes of man shall be brought low, and the heights of men shall bow down, and the LORD alone shall be lifted high in that day.For everyone who lifts himself will be brought low; and the one who lowers himself will be lifted up.THE THREAD
Swelling goes before breaking, and a breath lifted high goes before a stumbling.Jeremiah’s גְּאוֹן (ge’on, pride) and Proverbs’ גָּאוֹן (ga’on, pride) are the same Hebrew word. Proverbs unfolds the movement compressed here: the raised self precedes a fall, making the height-language a trajectory, not just a description.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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