What Does Jeremiah 49:24 Mean?
Damascus lets her hands drop, and turns to flee, and trembling grips her. The narrow place and cords have seized her, as a woman in labor.
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
Damascus is waxed feeble, and turneth herself to flee, and fear hath seized on her: anguish and sorrows have taken her, as a woman in travail.THE KEY
The Hebrew puts strength going slack beside pangs that grip, setting the body’s letting-go against terror’s hold.
THE MEANING
Fear can make your strength loosen and turn your whole self toward flight. The verse gives anguish a bodily shape: trembling and labor-pangs that seize and overwhelm.
THE ROOT
רָפְתָה
raphtah
GROWS FROM
רפה
raphah
To slacken, loosen, or become weak.
“lets her hands drop” in this verse is raphtah. The verb describes strength going slack, with the sense of letting go beneath the English “waxed feeble.” That slackening stands beside the grip of fear and pain: the body lets go as distress takes hold.
ALSO GROWS
hirpah: Loosened; let go.
הִרְפָּה
This form from the same root makes the verse’s weakening resonate with release.
nirpeh: Slack; weak.
נִרְפֶּה
The same root describes a slack or weakened state, showing the change in strength as a loosening.
חֲבָלִים
chavalim
GROWS FROM
חבל
chaval
To bind or twist; the related noun can mean a cord, and the word here means pangs.
The Hebrew word for labor-pangs shares its root with a word for cords. Anguish is pictured as tightening pressure that binds the body, not simply as an inward feeling.
ALSO GROWS
chevel: Cord; rope.
חֶבֶל
The cord and the pangs share the consonants חבל, linking pain with the sensation of tightening and binding.
chaval: To bind or take as a pledge.
חָבַל
This verb from the same root deepens the image of distress as something that holds fast.
אֲחָזָתָהּ
achazatah
GROWS FROM
אחז
achaz
To grasp, seize, or hold.
“seized” in this verse is achazatah. The pangs do not merely visit; they seize her. The verse also uses הֶחֱזִיקָה (hecheziqah, “held fast”), from חזק (chazaq, “be strong, hold fast”); the shared consonants ח־ז echo the grip through two distinct roots.
ALSO GROWS
le'echóz: To grasp; to hold.
לֶאֱחֹז
This verb makes explicit the grasp already carried by “taken her.”
achuzzah: Possession; holding.
אֲחֻזָּה
The noun carries the same root into the idea of something held or possessed.
THE PATTERN
Overwhelming distress takes bodily form as labor-pangs that seize and grip.
And they will be startled; pangs and cords will take hold of them; they will writhe as a woman in labor; they will gape at one another; their faces will be as flames.Trembling seized them there, and writhing, as of a woman in labor.When they say, "Wholeness and firm footing," then sudden ruin stands over them, like labor pains upon a woman carrying a child in her womb, and they will not escape.THE THREAD
And they will be startled; pangs and cords will take hold of them; they will writhe as a woman in labor; they will gape at one another; their faces will be as flames.Jeremiah and Isaiah use the same Hebrew word חֲבָלִים (chavalim) for pangs, a word that also names cords. Both verses pair those pangs with the language of being seized, making distress feel like pressure tightening around the body.
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