What Does Jeremiah 52:15 Mean?
Then Nebuzaradan, captain of the guard, uncovered some of the emptied of the people, and the rest of the people who remained in the city, and those who had fallen away, who fell to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.
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 Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard carried away captive certain of the poor of the people, and the residue of the people that remained in the city, and those that fell away, that fell to the king of Babylon, and the rest of the multitude.THE KEY
The Hebrew repeats one root where English says “fell away” and “fell to,” binding desertion and surrender into the same image of falling.
THE MEANING
You see a city’s people sorted into the poor, those still inside, those who have yielded to Babylon, and the rest of the crowd. The conqueror takes them all; poverty, remaining, and surrender offer no exemption. The repeated word for falling makes surrender and defeat share one word-shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that yielding to power guarantees safety dissolves here: those who fall to Babylon are carried away with the rest.
THE ROOT
נֹפְלִים
nōphelim
GROWS FROM
נפל
n-p-l
To fall, descend, or collapse.
“fell away / fell to” in this verse is nōphelim. English makes “fell away” sound like desertion and “fell to” like a transfer of allegiance, but Hebrew repeats נפל in both clauses. The root means “fall”; the phrase “to the king of Babylon” gives that fall its political sense.
ALSO GROWS
nōphelim: Those falling; in this verse, those who had defected.
נֹפְלִים
The Hebrew uses the ordinary word for falling where the KJV says “fell away.”
nāphəlū: They fell; here, they fell to the king of Babylon.
נָפְלוּ
Its repetition in the next clause binds the two English phrases into one image.
mappālāh: Downfall, ruin.
מַפָּלָה
This root can name a collective collapse as well as a person’s fall.
מִדַּלּוֹת
middallōt
GROWS FROM
דלל
d-l-l
To be low, weak, or reduced.
The word for “poor” grows from a root of being low or reduced. Poverty is thus named in the same language of lowered status that marks the people’s vulnerability in the conqueror’s inventory.
ALSO GROWS
dal: Lowly, weak, or poor.
דַּל
This is the singular form of the word used for the poor people in the verse.
dallōnū: We have become low or weak.
דַּלּוֹנוּ
In Psalm 79:8, the same root describes a people brought very low, echoing the vulnerability named here.
יֶתֶר
yether
GROWS FROM
יתר
y-t-r
To remain over, exceed, or be left over.
“residue / rest” in this verse is yether. Hebrew repeats יֶתֶר for both the “residue” in the city and the “rest” of the multitude. Both groups are named as what remains over, and even that remainder is counted and taken.
ALSO GROWS
yether: Remainder, rest, or what is left over.
יֶתֶר
This word appears twice in the verse, grouping both sets of people as the remainder.
hōtīr: To leave over or preserve.
הוֹתִיר
The verb from this root describes what is left behind after others are removed.
yitrōn: Surplus or advantage.
יִתְרוֹן
The root can also name what exceeds or remains beyond the rest.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses falling to show a reversal of power, whether the fall is defeat, surrender, or a setback followed by rising.
For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their tongue and their deeds are against the LORD, to embitter the eyes of his weight.For an aligned one falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble into harm.And he said to them, I watched the Adversary fall like lightning from the heavens.THE THREAD
For Jerusalem has stumbled, and Judah has fallen, because their tongue and their deeds are against the LORD, to embitter the eyes of his weight.Isaiah uses נפל for Judah’s fall, the same root repeated for the people who fall to Babylon here. The shared word ties the city’s collapse to the people’s surrender: both are falling under Babylon’s advance.
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