What Does Jeremiah 52:7 Mean?
Then the city was split open, and all the men of war fled and went out of the city by night, by way of the gate between the two walls, which is by the king's garden, while the Chaldeans were all around the city; and they went by way of the plain.
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 the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled, and went forth out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden; (now the Chaldeans were by the city round about:) and they went by the way of the plain.THE KEY
The city’s breach marks its defeat, yet it also opens the route through which escape becomes possible.
THE MEANING
A place enclosed by walls can be breached, and its opening becomes a route of flight. The fighting men flee at night through a gate between two walls while the Chaldeans surround the city; the route leads toward the plain, but the verse does not call that flight safety.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that walls guarantee safety: the city’s own boundary is broken, and its narrow gate becomes a route out under siege.
THE ROOT
וַתִּבָּקַע
vattibbaqaʿ
GROWS FROM
בקע
b-q-ʿ
to split, cleave, or break open
“split open” in this verse is vattibbaqaʿ. The verb for the city being broken open shares its root with the splitting of the sea for passage. Hebrew holds breach and opening together: the same kind of split can expose a place to defeat or make a way through it.
ALSO GROWS
vayyibbaqeʿu: they split open
וַיִּבָּקְעוּ
The same root describes the waters dividing in Exodus 14:21, where the opening becomes a route through the sea.
biqʿah: valley, a cleft or low open place
בִּקְעָה
This noun shares the root’s image of a split. Jeremiah’s final word for “plain” is a different Hebrew word, but the contrast brings the movement from breached enclosure toward open terrain into view.
THE PATTERN
When a boundary gives way, a passage appears where there was enclosure.
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.And suddenly there came a great shaking, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and at once all the doors were opened, and every one's bonds were untied.THE THREAD
And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD made the sea go back by a strong breath of the east all that night, and made the sea dry ground, and the waters were split.The same root, בקע, describes the city’s breach and the sea’s division. In both verses, a boundary splits open at night and a route appears through what had been closed.
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