What Does Jeremiah 51:62 Mean?
And you shall say, O LORD, you have spoken against this place to cut it off, so that none settles in it, from man to beast, for it shall be an emptiness for the ages.
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
Then shalt thou say, O LORD, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever.THE KEY
The Hebrew for “desolate” also carries the shock of being appalled, so this ruin is not just empty, it is devastating to behold.
THE MEANING
Here, the verse names a place cut off from habitation, with neither human nor animal life remaining. Its emptiness is stated without softening: this is not a brief vacancy. The Hebrew עוֹלָם (olam, age or ages) gives the desolation a span across the ages.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that devastation touches only human life: this sentence names both “man” and “beast,” extending the loss across the inhabited world.
THE ROOT
שְׁמָמוֹת
shammot
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
sh-m-m
To be desolate, laid waste, or appalled.
“an emptiness” in this verse is shammot. The word carries both the ruined state of a place and the shock of seeing it laid waste. Here שְׁמָמוֹת עוֹלָם (shammot olam, desolations of the ages) names that ruin as an enduring condition.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation; a devastated, empty place.
שְׁמָמָה
The place is not merely quiet; it bears the root’s full sense of devastation.
shamem: To be appalled or left desolate.
שָׁמֵם
The same root joins the condition of ruin with the shock it inspires.
לְהַכְרִיתוֹ
lehakhrîto
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
To cut or cut off.
“cut it off” in this verse is lehakhrîto. The verb describes a decisive severing, not a temporary pause in a place’s life. Its other branches can describe both forming a bond and formally ending one, showing how sharply this verse names the place’s separation from habitation.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: To cut a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb marks a decisive bond; here it marks a decisive severance from continued habitation.
sefer keritut: A document of severance, a certificate of divorce.
סֵפֶר כְּרִיתוּת
This branch uses the same root for the formal ending of a bond.
מֵאָדָם
me’adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
Human or earthling; אָדָם (adam, human) shares its word-family with אֲדָמָה (adamah, ground or soil).
“from man to beast” in this verse is me’adam. The word for the human echoes the word for the ground. Alongside the beast, the human earthling is included in the place’s total loss of habitation.
ALSO GROWS
adamah: Ground, soil.
אֲדָמָה
Its shared word-family with אָדָם (adam, human) holds the human and the ground together.
adam: Human, earthling, person.
אָדָם
Here the word names the human side of the verse’s sweep from person to beast.
THE PATTERN
Judgment becomes visible when a place is emptied of habitation and marked as desolate.
I see, and there is no human, and all the birds of the heavens have fled.It will never be settled, nor dwelt in from generation to generation. The Arabian will not pitch a tent there, nor will shepherds make their flocks lie down there.Look, your house is left to you, empty.THE THREAD
And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are filled, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, says the LORD, for their crookedness, and the land of the Chaldeans, and I will make it desolations of the ages.This verse uses the same paired words, שְׁמָמוֹת עוֹלָם (shammot olam, desolations of the ages), for Babylon’s ruin. The phrase sits beside “when seventy years are accomplished,” distinguishing the time when judgment comes from the lasting span of the desolation.
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