What Does Jeremiah 50:17 Mean?
Israel is a driven sheep; lions have driven him off. First the king of Assyria devoured him, and last this Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, gnawed his bones.
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
Israel is a scattered sheep; the lions have driven him away: first the king of Assyria hath devoured him; and last this Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon hath broken his bones.THE KEY
Scattering is not the end of the wound: it leaves the flock exposed to successive forms of predation.
THE MEANING
A people can be driven from its place, consumed, and left with damage that reaches the bones. The verse names these as distinct layers of harm: dispersal, pursuit, devouring, and fracture. Its images let the violence stay concrete and present.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that surviving one oppressor means the harm is over: the verse names another power and a further injury after the first devours.
THE ROOT
פְּזוּרָה
pezurah
GROWS FROM
פזר
p-z-r
to scatter, disperse
“driven” in this verse is pezurah. The word presents Israel as dispersed across space, like a flock pulled apart and left exposed. Hebrew keeps this scattering connected to the broader act of dispersing; it is the condition that makes the sheep vulnerable to what follows.
ALSO GROWS
pizzēr: he scattered, dispersed
פִּזֵּר
The active form makes visible the force behind the flock’s separation.
mefuzzar: scattered, dispersed
מְפֻזָּר
This form holds the resulting state of being spread apart, the condition named in the verse.
הֶעֱצִימוֹ
he'etzimo
GROWS FROM
עצם
ʿ-tz-m
bone; to make strong or numerous, depending on form and context
The Hebrew verb here is built from עצם, the word for bone, and says Nebuchadnezzar has crushed or broken his bones. The wording makes the damage bodily and specific: the violence reaches the skeleton itself.
ALSO GROWS
ʿetsem: bone; substance or very self
עֶצֶם
The noun names what the verse says is broken, keeping the image physical.
ʿatzmot: bones
עַצְמוֹת
The plural form makes the bodily target explicit rather than leaving the harm abstract.
אֲכָלוֹ
akhalo
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾ-k-l
to eat, consume
“devoured” in this verse is akhalo. The king’s devouring and ordinary eating belong to the same Hebrew verb, אכל (akal). The wording places conquest within the act of consumption: a people becomes prey in the mouth of power.
ALSO GROWS
okhel: one eating; eater
אֹכֵל
The form keeps the devourer within the ordinary act of eating.
ma'akhal: food
מַאֲכָל
This noun shows the other side of the same root: what is consumed.
THE PATTERN
When a people is exposed and abandoned, scripture pictures predatory power as scattering and consuming the flock.
They were scattered, because there is no shepherd, and they became food for every beast of the field, when they were scattered.But the hired hand, who is not the shepherd, and whose sheep they are not, sees the wolf coming, and lets go of the sheep, and flees. And the wolf snatches them and scatters them.THE THREAD
Rebuke the beast of the reeds, the assembly of bulls, the calves of the peoples, each one trampling himself with pieces of silver; scatter the peoples who delight in war.Jeremiah calls Israel פְּזוּרָה (pezurah, scattered), from פזר (p-z-r, scatter or disperse); Psalm 68:30 uses that same root in “scatter thou.” The same scattering that leaves a flock exposed here becomes a force directed against those who delight in war there.
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