What Does Jeremiah 50:3 Mean?
For out of the north a nation climbs up against her, and it shall set her land into desolation. None shall settle there. From man to beast, they shall shake away and walk away.
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
For out of the north there cometh up a nation against her, which shall make her land desolate, and none shall dwell therein: they shall remove, they shall depart, both man and beast.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “desolate” also carries the shock of being stunned: the emptied land is appalling to witness.
THE MEANING
A force rises against her and empties her land until no one lives there. People and animals both depart, giving the devastation its full measure: no living residents remain. The verse’s stark image speaks now wherever a place is stripped of every living presence.
THE ROOT
לְשַׁמָּה
ləšammāh
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
To be desolate or appalled; to leave waste.
“desolate” in this verse is ləšammāh. English presents desolation as a condition of the land, while this Hebrew root also carries the sense of being stunned. The same root can describe both the emptied place and the shock of seeing it.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation, waste.
שְׁמָמָה
This noun from the same root makes the land’s emptiness explicit; the verse says the force turns her land into this condition.
yishom: He will be astonished or stunned.
יִשֹּׁם
In Jeremiah 50:13, this form of the same root describes the passerby’s response to Babylon’s desolation, joining the empty land with the shock it produces.
THE PATTERN
The devastation of a place is shown by the disappearance of its inhabitants and the silence that follows.
For thus says the LORD, the whole land will be emptied; yet I will not make it run out.It will never be settled, nor dwelt in from generation to generation. The Arabian will not pitch a tent there, nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there.And the light of a lamp shall shine no more at all in you; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in you; for your traders were the great ones of the earth; for by your potions all nations were made to wander.THE THREAD
Because of the LORD's outburst, it shall not be settled, but all of it shall be emptied. Everyone who crosses by Babylon shall be stunned, and hiss at all her blows.The root שׁמם (sh-m-m) returns in both “desolate” and “astonished”: the land is emptied, and the passerby is stunned by what they see. The shared root joins the devastation itself to the shock of witnessing it.
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