What Does Jeremiah 51:55 Mean?
For the LORD ravages Babylon, and makes perish from her the great voice. When her waves roar like great waters, the noise of their voice is given.
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
Because the LORD hath spoiled Babylon, and destroyed out of her the great voice; when her waves do roar like great waters, a noise of their voice is uttered:THE KEY
Babylon’s power swells like a sea, yet the verse names its roar as tumult and shows the LORD stripping away its great voice.
THE MEANING
The LORD lays Babylon waste and removes her great voice. The waters still surge and their tumult is heard, so the verse lets destruction and noise stand together: a loud power can be broken while its roar is still echoing. This word speaks wherever domination sounds too immense to end.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a power becomes permanent because it fills every space with its voice: even a roar like many waters can be stripped away.
THE ROOT
שָׁדַד
shādad
GROWS FROM
שדד
shādad
to despoil violently, plunder, or lay waste
“ravages” in this verse is shādad. This root carries the force of plundering and devastation through the English “spoiled.” Beside the removal of Babylon’s “great voice,” it shows her public power being stripped through real desolation.
ALSO GROWS
shōd: plunder, devastation
שֹׁד
This noun from the same root makes the destructive force behind the LORD’s action visible.
shōdēd: plunderer, destroyer
שֹׁדֵד
The related agent word shows the root naming both the devastation and the one who brings it.
וְהֶאֱבִיד
ve-heʾĕvîd
GROWS FROM
אבד
ʾābad
to perish or be lost; in this causative form, to cause to perish or remove
“makes perish” in this verse is ve-heʾĕvîd. The verse says the great voice is made to perish from Babylon. The root’s sense of perishing and being lost makes the removal of that voice part of Babylon’s devastation.
ALSO GROWS
ʾōvēd: perishing, lost
אֹבֵד
This form shows the root describing what is vanishing, illuminating the voice that is removed from Babylon.
ʾăvaddōn: destruction, ruin
אֲבַדּוֹן
This related noun carries the root into the state of ruin that follows the loss.
הָמוּ
hāmû
GROWS FROM
המה
hāmāh
to roar, murmur, or make a tumult
English separates the waves that “roar” from the voice that becomes “noise,” while this root gathers them into one turbulent sound. Babylon’s apparent grandeur takes the shape of a surging tumult, not a settled permanence.
ALSO GROWS
hāmôn: tumult, din, multitude
הָמוֹן
The same sound family can name a crowd as well as a din, fitting the verse’s image of waves and a great voice.
hōmiyyāh: clamorous, noisy
הֹמִיָּה
This related form describes a loud, clamoring presence, showing how the root’s roar can fill the scene.
THE PATTERN
Roaring powers can be scattered and brought down, however vast they sound.
The nations shall crash like the roar of many waters; but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be pursued like chaff of the mountains before the breath, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.And a strong messenger lifts a stone like a great millstone, and throws it into the sea, saying, With a rush shall Babylon the great city be thrown down, and shall never be found again.THE THREAD
The nations roar, the kingdoms totter; he gives his voice, and the earth melts.Jeremiah’s “roar” and the nations’ “raged” share the root הָמָה (hāmāh, to roar or churn in tumult): the same turbulent sound can rise from waves or kingdoms. Psalm 46 then gives the LORD’s voice against that roar, the earth melts, and the surging powers do not control the last sound.
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