What Does Jeremiah 52:23 Mean?
There were ninety-six pomegranates toward each breath, and all the pomegranates upon the lattice were one hundred 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 there were ninety and six pomegranates on a side; and all the pomegranates upon the network were an hundred round about.THE KEY
Ninety-six are counted from one side, but the network holds one hundred all around: what your angle cannot show still belongs to the whole.
THE MEANING
You see ninety-six from one side, while the count around the whole network is one hundred. The four beyond that view are not missing; the full circle exceeds the face you can see.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse loosens the belief that what falls outside your view falls outside the whole. The side count is real, but it is not the full count.
THE ROOT
רוּחָה
ruachah
GROWS FROM
ר־ו־ח
Moving air: wind or breath; by extension, a direction or side.
“toward each breath” in this verse is ruachah. The KJV’s “side” sounds like bare geometry, but its Hebrew comes from ruach, the word that can mean breath, wind, or direction. The ninety-six are counted by a facing; “all around” then gives the full circumference, naming a limited view without mistaking it for the whole.
ALSO GROWS
wind: Moving air.
רוּחַ
The side count is measured by direction, and Hebrew uses the same word that names wind.
breath: The breath of life.
רוּחַ
The word translated “side” belongs to the same root that names breath, holding orientation and breath within one Hebrew word.
THE PATTERN
A face of the whole can be counted without exhausting what encircles it.
And four hundred pomegranates for the two nettings, even two rows of pomegranates for one netting, to cover the two bowls of the crowns that were upon the pillars.And below, on its hem, you will make pomegranates of blue, purple, and scarlet, and gold bells between them, all around.from whom the whole body, joined together and knit by every joint that supplies, according to the working in the measure of each part, makes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.THE THREAD
And four hundred pomegranates for the two nettings, even two rows of pomegranates for one netting, to cover the two bowls of the crowns that were upon the pillars.Kings describes the same pomegranates arranged in rows on networks covering the pillar capitals. Read beside Jeremiah, the one-sided count is a view within a larger architectural circuit, while the full count reaches all around.
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