What Does Jeremiah 50:16 Mean?
Cut off the one who sows seed from Babylon, and the one who grasps the sickle at the time of reaping. From the face of the pressing sword, each one turns to his own people, and each one flees to his own land.
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
Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest: for fear of the oppressing sword they shall turn every one to his people, and they shall flee every one to his own land.THE KEY
Babylon’s abundance depends on the hands that sow and reap, and the sword empties the land by driving those hands away.
THE MEANING
This verse shows how an oppressing power empties a land of the people whose work sustains it: the sower and harvest worker are cut off from Babylon. Each person turns toward their own people and flees to their own land, so the sword breaks both production and the city’s hold on belonging.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a prosperous center can keep its abundance while terror rules it: fear drives the workers out, severing the cycle that sustains the fields.
THE ROOT
זֹרֵעַ
zōrēaʿ
GROWS FROM
זרע
z-r-ʿ
To sow or scatter seed.
“sows seed” in this verse is zōrēaʿ. English makes “sower” sound like a job title, but its root also names seed and offspring. The worker being driven away is the human link between what is planted now and what can grow later.
ALSO GROWS
zeraʿ: Seed; offspring.
זֶרַע
The sower’s work carries both the next crop and the possibility of a next generation.
zāraʿ: To sow.
זָרַע
The verb names the act that begins the cycle Babylon’s workers are forced to leave behind.
קָצִיר
qāṣîr
GROWS FROM
קצר
q-ṣ-r
To reap or cut short; also, to be short.
The harvest word grows from a root that also means “to be short”: reaping is the cutting of what has grown. Here, the harvest worker is driven from the land, and the expected cutting of grain gives way to the sword’s interruption.
ALSO GROWS
qōṣēr: Reaper; one who harvests.
קֹצֵר
The reaper is the person whose work completes the growing cycle that the verse shows being broken.
qōṣer: Shortness; being cut short.
קֹצֶר
This branch gives the harvest word an edge of interruption: what should reach its appointed end is cut short.
THE PATTERN
Scripture marks Babylon’s unraveling through departure: people are scattered, flee home, or are called out.
Therefore its name was called Babel, the mixing, because there the LORD mixed up the lip of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them across the face of all the earth.And it will be like a driven gazelle, and like a sheep that no one gathers in; they will each turn to their own people, and each will flee into their own land.And I hear another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, so that you do not share in her shortcomings, and that you do not receive from her blows.THE THREAD
All the days of the earth, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not stop.Genesis places seedtime and harvest inside a rhythm that does not cease across the earth; Jeremiah shows Babylon’s fields depending on the people its sword drives away. The shared words reveal the threat as a rupture in one land’s cycle of planting and food, not the end of life’s wider rhythm.
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