What Does Jeremiah 51:22 Mean?
With you also I will shatter man and woman; and with you I will break old and young; and with you I will shatter the young man and the maiden.
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
With thee also will I break in pieces man and woman; and with thee will I break in pieces old and young; and with thee will I break in pieces the young man and the maid;THE KEY
The Hebrew verb for “break in pieces” also carries the sense of scattering, joining the blow to the dispersal that follows.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks through an instrument of destruction, with no listed human distinction left outside its reach. Men and women, old and young, young men and maidens all fall within the scope of the shattering.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that violence respects age or sex as boundaries: the verse names each distinction only to show that it offers no protection.
THE ROOT
אֲנַפֵּץ
ʾănappēṣ
GROWS FROM
נפץ
n-p-ts
To shatter or dash in pieces; in some forms, to scatter or spread out.
“break in pieces” in this verse is ʾănappēṣ. The English phrase can sound like a single impact, but נפץ holds shattering and scattering within the same root. Here the repeated verb and the widening list make the violence comprehensive: no age or sex stands beyond its reach.
ALSO GROWS
overspread: Was spread across the earth.
נָפְצָה
In Genesis 9:19, this form of the root describes spreading outward, revealing the dispersal held alongside the sense of shattering.
dasheth: Dashes or shatters.
וְנִפֵּץ
Psalm 137:9 uses the same root for the violent image of little ones dashed against stones, preserving the root’s blunt physical force.
THE PATTERN
Scripture exposes violence’s reach by naming the people it strikes across age and sex.
Flourishing is he who seizes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.Therefore he brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their set-apart place, and did not spare young man or maid, old man, or the gray-haired one. He gave them all into his hand.Then Herod, when he perceived that he had been mocked by the wise men, burned with rage, and sent forth and killed all the children who were in Bethlehem and in all its borders, from two years old and under, according to the time he had carefully learned from the wise men.THE THREAD
These three are the sons of Noah, and from them the whole earth was scattered.The Hebrew verb behind “overspread” comes from the same root as “break in pieces” here. Its range joins shattering with scattering: what is broken apart can also be dispersed.
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