What Does Jeremiah 50:43 Mean?
The king of Babylon heard the report of them, and his hands have dropped. The narrow place took hold of him, and cords like those of 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
The king of Babylon hath heard the report of them, and his hands waxed feeble: anguish took hold of him, and pangs as of a woman in travail.THE KEY
The report makes the king’s world contract: anguish is constriction, and his body gives way under its grip.
THE MEANING
The report reaches the king, and his hands lose their strength; anguish takes hold of him with the force of labor pains. The verse shows dread moving through the whole person: the hands slacken, and the body carries the pressure. Even visible power does not keep a person outside that grip.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that authority makes a person immune to fear: even a king’s hands can go slack when anguish takes hold.
THE ROOT
צָרָה
tsarah
GROWS FROM
צָרַר
tsarar
To bind, press in, or constrict; also to act as an adversary.
The word for anguish belongs to a family of binding and narrowing: distress closes in and takes hold. The same consonantal family can describe both a narrow place and an adversary pressing against someone.
ALSO GROWS
tsorer: An adversary, one who presses against or opposes.
צֹרֵר
This branch shows how pressure can take the form of an adversary bearing down on someone.
tseror: A bundle, something bound together.
צְרוֹר
The binding sense makes the anguish’s grip tangible: it gathers the person into its hold.
metzar: A narrow place or strait; a form from the same narrowing consonantal family.
מֵצַר
It gives the verse’s distress a spatial dimension: anguish is a place that hems someone in.
רָפוּ
raphu
GROWS FROM
רָפָה
raphah
To loosen, slacken, or let drop.
“have dropped” in this verse is raphu. The hands do not simply lack strength; they slacken and let go. Beside the constricting anguish, the root shows the king’s grip giving way under pressure.
ALSO GROWS
raphah: To loosen, slacken, or release.
רָפָה
The verb’s sense of letting go illuminates how the king’s hands lose their hold.
rapheh: Slack, weak, or feeble.
רָפֶה
This related form names the loosened state shown by the king’s hands.
כַּיּוֹלֵדָה
kayyoledah
GROWS FROM
יָלַד
yalad
To bear or give birth.
The image comes from the root for bearing a child, making the anguish bodily and involuntary, like labor under pressure. The verse describes the force of the pain without telling what, if anything, follows from it.
ALSO GROWS
yalad: To bear or give birth.
יָלַד
The verb names the labor at the heart of the comparison.
yeled: A child; one who is born.
יֶלֶד
This branch shows the other side of the same root’s meaning: birth and what is brought forth.
THE PATTERN
An approaching rupture is pictured as pressure that seizes the body and makes even strength give way to travail.
We have heard the report of it, and our hands have dropped. The narrow place has seized us, cords as of a woman in labor.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.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
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.Jeremiah’s צָרָה (tsarah, distress) belongs to the צ־ר־ר (ts-r-r, binding and constricting) family; Psalm 118:5 names distress as מֵצַר (metzar, a narrow place). The psalm then moves from that narrow place into מֶרְחָב (merchav, a broad space), opening the movement from anguish’s enclosure toward spaciousness.
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