What Does Jeremiah 51:31 Mean?
One runner shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to declare to the king of Babylon that his city is seized at one edge.
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
One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end,THE KEY
What is caught at the city’s edge cannot stay there: its capture becomes a chain of reports racing toward the center.
THE MEANING
A breach does not stay at the edge: one runner meets another, one messenger another, until the king receives the report that his city is captured. The loss is no longer local; it is moving through the whole structure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a ruler can keep a loss confined to the edge dissolves here: the relay of messengers carries the capture straight to the center.
THE ROOT
נִלְכְּדָה
nilkedah
GROWS FROM
לכד
To catch, seize, or capture.
The word translated “taken” is a form of לָכַד, “to capture”: the city is not merely transferred but caught. The same root names both the act of seizing and the city’s state once seized, so the report describes a completed capture moving outward through the messengers.
ALSO GROWS
lakad: To catch, seize, or capture.
לָכַד
This is the active form of the root: capture is the action that leaves the city caught.
vayilkedu: And they captured.
וַיִּלְכְּדוּ
Judges 1:8 uses this form when Judah captures Jerusalem, showing the same root naming the concrete taking of a city.
THE PATTERN
A fallen stronghold becomes public through reports that carry its defeat from witness to witness.
Declare it among the nations and sound it out. Lift a banner. Sound it out, and do not hide it. Say, Babylon is taken; Bel is shamed; Merodach is shattered. Her idols are shamed, and her images are shattered.And look, here comes a chariot of men, a yoked pair of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon has fallen, has fallen; and all the hewn images of her gods he has broken to the ground.And he cried out with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great has fallen, has fallen, and has become the place where demons settle, and the holding place of every unclean breath, and the holding place of every unclean and hated bird.THE THREAD
Declare it among the nations and sound it out. Lift a banner. Sound it out, and do not hide it. Say, Babylon is taken; Bel is shamed; Merodach is shattered. Her idols are shamed, and her images are shattered.Jeremiah 50:2 uses the same root, לָכַד (lakad), for Babylon’s capture, then sends that fact outward as a public declaration. Here the capture is no longer proclamation alone: the chain of reports reaches the king himself.
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