What Does Jeremiah 51:39 Mean?
In their heat I will set out their drink, and make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep the sleep of the ages, and not wake, says the LORD.
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
In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD.THE KEY
Hebrew names the feast as a drinking-feast, so the revelry becomes the threshold to a sleep with no waking.
THE MEANING
The scene holds the feast, intoxication, rejoicing, and death in a single motion: the LORD makes them drunk, and they sleep without waking. The violence remains explicit; their joy accompanies the sentence rather than interrupting it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that celebration proves safety: here, rejoicing stands beside an unwaking sleep.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁתֵּיהֶם
mishtehem
GROWS FROM
שתה
to drink
“drink” in this verse is mishtehem. The word translated “feasts” names drinking-feasts. The verse then moves to a separate root for making them drunk, tracing a concrete progression from drinking occasion to intoxication to unwaking sleep.
ALSO GROWS
shatah: to drink
שָׁתָה
This is the verb beneath the drinking-feast named in the verse.
mishteh: a drinking-feast or banquet
מִשְׁתֶּה
This is the singular form of the word used here for their feasts.
חֻמָּם
chummam
GROWS FROM
חמם
to be hot or heated
The scene begins with heat before it turns to drinking and sleep. The same root can carry the sense of burning anger, keeping bodily heat and emotional intensity close together in the opening phrase.
ALSO GROWS
cham: hot or warm
חַם
This preserves the root’s bodily sense of heat.
chemah: heat; burning anger
חֵמָה
This branch lets the opening phrase carry the possibility of anger as well as physical heat.
שְׁנַת
shenat
GROWS FROM
ישן
to sleep
The noun for sleep belongs to the same root as the verb for being asleep. Here, the added words “and not wake” make the image’s ending unmistakable: this is sleep sealed against return.
ALSO GROWS
yashen: sleeping or asleep
יָשֵׁן
This is the verb-form branch of the root that underlies the noun in the verse.
shenah: sleep
שֵׁנָה
This noun-form branch names the state that the verse says will not end in waking.
THE PATTERN
In judgment, feasting and self-assurance can precede sudden collapse.
So you shall say to them, Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel. Drink, and be drunk, and vomit, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword that I will send among you.And I will say to my living soul, Living soul, you have much good stored for many years. Rest, eat, drink, and be glad. But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?As much as she gave herself weight and feasted, so much scourging and mourning give her; for she says in her heart, I sit as a queen, and I am no widow, and I shall never encounter mourning. Therefore her blows shall come in one day, death, and mourning, and hunger; and she shall be burned down with fire, for strong is the LORD God who judges her.THE THREAD
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground shall awake, some to the life of the ages, and some to exposure and contempt for the ages.Daniel uses the same Hebrew sleep-root, ישן, for those who awake, while Jeremiah’s sleepers “not wake.” The shared root sets two endings against each other: sleep sealed shut here, awakening there.
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