What Does Jeremiah 48:4 Mean?
Moab is broken. Her little ones have caused a cry to be heard.
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
Moab is destroyed; her little ones have caused a cry to be heard.THE KEY
The verse makes a people’s ruin audible through the cry of its young.
THE MEANING
Moab’s breaking is heard through the cry of its little ones. Their voices make the cost of a people’s destruction impossible to leave abstract.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a people’s destruction can be described without its human cost; the young ones’ cry makes that cost audible.
THE ROOT
צְעָקָה
tse'aqah
GROWS FROM
צעק
tsa'aq
To cry out, especially in distress.
“caused a cry to be heard” in this verse is tse'aqah. This is an outcry, not a quiet report. The same root names the cry in Exodus 3:7, where the LORD says it is heard; here, the young ones’ voices make Moab’s breaking audible.
ALSO GROWS
tsa'aq: To cry out.
צָעַק
This verb is the seed of the outcry named in the verse.
tse'aqah: An outcry or cry of distress.
צְעָקָה
This noun gives the young ones’ suffering a sound that can be heard.
נִשְׁבְּרָה
nishberah
GROWS FROM
שבר
shavar
To break or shatter.
The Hebrew pictures Moab as broken. That fracture is not left as an abstract status: the next words give it a sound in the cry of the young.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
This verb is the root beneath the verse’s description of Moab as broken.
shever: A fracture, breach, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This related word gives breaking the sense of damage and a broken state.
צֹעֲרֶיהָ
tso'areha
GROWS FROM
צער
tsa'ar
To be small; smallness or youth.
“little ones” in this verse is tso'areha. The young ones are named with צער (tsa’ar, smallness), while the cry is צעק (tsa’aq, to cry out). Their first two consonants, צ־ע, echo one another, though the words have distinct roots; the sound links the young ones to their outcry.
ALSO GROWS
tsa'ir: Young, small, or lesser.
צָעִיר
This related word carries the sense of youth and smallness found in “little ones.”
mits'ar: A little thing or a small amount.
מִצְעָר
This related form extends the root’s sense of smallness.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes communal suffering audible through the cries of the vulnerable.
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.For he who seeks out blood remembers them; he does not forget the cry of the bowed ones.In Ramah a voice was heard, wailing, and weeping, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they are not.THE THREAD
And the LORD said, I have surely seen the bending low of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their drivers. For I know their pains.The Hebrew צְעָקָה (tse’aqah, outcry) in Jeremiah and the cry in Exodus share the root צעק (tsa’aq, to cry out). Exodus makes explicit that this kind of outcry is heard by the LORD.
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