What Does Jeremiah 51:51 Mean?
We are ashamed, for we have heard the taunt. Shame has covered our faces, for strangers have come into the set-apart places of the LORD's house.
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
We are confounded, because we have heard reproach: shame hath covered our faces: for strangers are come into the sanctuaries of the LORD’s house.THE KEY
Shame here is not invisible: it covers the face when reproach enters the space set apart for the LORD.
THE MEANING
When reproach reaches you through the report of a violated sacred place, the community is confounded and shame covers its face. The verse keeps that humiliation tied to strangers entering what is set apart as the LORD’s house.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that shame always proves a private defect: here disgrace follows heard reproach and an intrusion into the community’s set-apart space.
THE ROOT
כְּלִמָּה
kelimmah
GROWS FROM
כלם
k-l-m: to wound, disgrace, or humiliate.
כְּלִמָּה (kelimmah) comes from כלם (k-l-m), a root of wounding and humiliation. The shame in this line is more than a passing feeling: it is disgrace inflicted through reproach, then pictured as covering the face.
ALSO GROWS
hikhlîm: to shame or humiliate
הִכְלִים
This verb carries the same כ-ל-מ consonants into an inflicted act, showing how disgrace can be done to someone.
nikhlam: humiliated or put to shame
נִכְלָם
This form carries the same root into the state of the person made to bear disgrace.
מִקְדְּשֵׁי
miqd'shei
GROWS FROM
קדש
q-d-sh: to set apart, consecrate.
“set-apart places” in this verse is miqd'shei. The word translated “sanctuaries” grows from the root for being set apart. The violation is a crossing into a space marked off for the LORD, which makes the reproach a breach of sacred space.
ALSO GROWS
qadosh: set apart
קָדוֹשׁ
This adjective names the quality that marks the sanctuaries as distinct.
qodesh: set-apartness; a sacred place
קֹדֶשׁ
This noun shares the root and names both the condition of being set apart and the space marked by it.
שָׁמַעְנוּ
shama'nu
GROWS FROM
שמע
sh-m-ʿ: to hear, listen, or receive what is said.
The reproach first arrives as something heard. The verse links that external accusation to the embodied shame that follows, without collapsing the report and its effect into one thing.
ALSO GROWS
shemu'ah: a report or tidings
שְׁמוּעָה
This noun from the same root shows what is heard arriving as a report.
shomea: a hearer or listener
שֹׁמֵעַ
This form keeps the root’s act of hearing visible in the person who receives what is said.
THE PATTERN
Reproach is not presented as abstract emotion: Scripture locates shame on the face or names it as something borne.
All day my disgrace stands opposite me, and the shame of my face covers me.For your sake I carry reproach, and shame covers my face.Fixing our sight on Jesus, the one who goes first and brings our trust to its goal, who for the joy lying before him remained under the cross, looking down on the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.THE THREAD
Let them be ashamed who pursue me, but let not me be ashamed; let them be shattered, but let not me be shattered; bring upon them the day of harm, and break them with a double breaking.Both verses use בוש (b-w-sh), “to be ashamed or put to shame”: here the community bears that confounding after outsiders enter its sacred space, while Jeremiah 17:18 asks that persecutors bear it. The shared root makes the issue more exact than a private emotion: shame is an exposure that can land on different people.
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