What Does Jeremiah 50:40 Mean?
As God overturned Sodom and Gomorrah and their neighboring cities, declares the LORD, so no man shall settle there, and no son of man shall sojourn in it.
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
As God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah and the neighbour cities thereof, saith the LORD; so shall no man abide there, neither shall any son of man dwell therein.THE KEY
The verse measures ruin by its final proof: a place turned over so completely that no one can remain or settle there.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a stark image of ruin: a place is overturned until no person remains there and no human makes a home there. Its paired statements widen the desolation from anyone who might stay to anyone who might settle.
THE ROOT
מַהְפֵּכַת
mahpekhat
GROWS FROM
הפך
Turn, overturn, change.
“overturned” in this verse is mahpekhat. The Hebrew noun for “overthrow” grows from the same seed as the verb “to turn.” It gives the destruction the image of an entire order turned over; the verse measures that overturning by the absence of anyone who can live there.
ALSO GROWS
haphak: To turn or overturn.
הָפַךְ
The verb exposes the motion inside the noun: this is a place turned over.
mahpekah: An overturning or overthrow.
מַהְפֵּכָה
This is the noun form behind the verse’s image of ruin.
יֵשֵׁב
yēshēv
GROWS FROM
ישב
Sit, remain, dwell.
“settle” in this verse is yēshēv. The word rendered “abide” carries the picture of sitting or settling in a place. Beside the next clause’s verb for lodging or residing, it makes the emptiness comprehensive: no one settles there, and no one stays there.
ALSO GROWS
yōshēv: One who sits, remains, or dwells.
יֹשֵׁב
The absence of even one resident is already contained in the image of no one sitting there.
moshav: A dwelling place or settlement.
מוֹשָׁב
The root extends from an act of sitting to the settled place people make their home.
שְׁכֵנֶיהָ
shekheneyha
GROWS FROM
שכן
Dwell, settle, inhabit.
“neighbour cities” in this verse is shekheneyha. The Hebrew word for the neighboring cities is related to dwelling: they are the settlements around the named place. The verse’s overturning reaches beyond one city to the inhabited places beside it.
ALSO GROWS
shakan: To dwell or settle.
שָׁכַן
The root reveals the inhabited life implied by the neighboring settlements.
mishkan: A dwelling place or tabernacle.
מִשְׁכָּן
This branch shows how the same root can name a place made for dwelling.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays complete ruin as an overturning that empties places of human presence and settled life.
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.But on the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven, and made them all perish.And he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ash, condemning them with an overturning, making them a pattern for those who would live without awe.THE THREAD
And he overturned those cities, and all the plain, and all who settled in those cities, and what sprouted from the ground.Genesis uses the same Hebrew root, הפך (haphak), in “overthrew”; Jeremiah uses its noun form for “overthrow.” Genesis shows the overturning reaching the inhabitants and the ground, while Jeremiah gives its stark measure: no human dwelling remains.
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