What Does Jeremiah 52:14 Mean?
And all the army of the Chaldeans who were with the captain of the guard tore down all the walls of Jerusalem all around.
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
And all the army of the Chaldeans, that were with the captain of the guard, brake down all the walls of Jerusalem round about.THE KEY
The verse’s shock is total: every wall around the city associated with wholeness is torn down.
THE MEANING
This verse holds the full force of a boundary’s collapse: the assault reaches every side, leaving no protected edge. Jerusalem carries the resonance of wholeness while its entire enclosure lies shattered. The violence is complete around the perimeter.
THE ROOT
נָתְצוּ
natetsu
GROWS FROM
נתץ
natats
Tear down, break apart.
“tore down” in this verse is natetsu. This root names the dismantling of a structure, not merely damage to one spot. Here it describes the army tearing away the city’s enclosing boundary.
ALSO GROWS
lintots: To tear down.
לִנְתּוֹץ
Jeremiah 1:10 uses this form for pulling down, giving the root the same force of dismantling.
nittats: To be torn down.
נִתַּץ
This passive form shows the other side of the action: a structure receiving the force of the tear-down.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שלם
shalem
Whole, complete.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. The name carries the resonance of shalom, wholeness. That resonance stands beside the sight of the city’s entire enclosure shattered, holding the wound in sharp view.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
The city’s name echoes this word for wholeness as its walls are broken all around.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
This form makes the contrast in the verse vivid: the name carries wholeness while the physical boundary is demolished.
סָבִיב
saviv
GROWS FROM
סבב
savav
Turn around, circle, surround.
“round about” in this verse is saviv. The word is built on the root of circling or surrounding, so the verse specifies a breach that consumes the circumference, not just one wall. The surrounding enclosure itself is what the army takes away.
ALSO GROWS
savav: To circle or surround.
סָבַב
The verb makes the all-around scope of the destruction concrete.
sovev: Turning or surrounding.
סוֹבֵב
This form carries the same surrounding motion that the verse places around the city.
THE PATTERN
When the enclosing boundary is torn down, the place or life within it is left exposed.
Come, I will tell you what I will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge, and it shall be eaten up. I will break through its wall, and it shall be trampled.A city broken through, with no wall, is a man who has no hold on his breath.Jesus said to them, Do you not see all these things? Truly, I say to you, not one stone here is let go upon another stone that is not loosened.THE THREAD
See, I have set you this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to uproot and to tear down, to make perish and to break down, to build and to plant.The Hebrew root נתץ appears there as “to pull down,” the same tear-down named here. Jeremiah 52:14 gives that root a stark physical image: the city’s circumference itself comes apart.
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