What Does Jeremiah 13:21 Mean in the King James?
What wilt thou say when he shall punish thee? for thou hast taught them to be captains, and as chief over thee: shall not sorrows take thee, as a woman in travail?
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
What you teach to stand over you can return as a grip that cannot be talked away.
THE MEANING
This verse meets the reader where powers taught into authority now stand over them. The pressure is not abstract: it seizes like labor pains, making the consequence felt in the body. The question “What wilt thou say?” leaves the reader inside the moment of accountability.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that what you train into authority will remain under your control: what you teach over you can become the very power that seizes you.
THE ROOT
חֲבָלִים
chavalim
GROWS FROM
חבל
chaval
The word family carries the image of binding or cords, and also names the pangs of labor.
The word translated “sorrows” also means cords, so the pain is pictured as something that binds and closes around the reader. The labor comparison keeps that grip bodily and immediate: the pressure is not distant grief but travail.
ALSO GROWS
chevel: Cord, rope, or measuring line.
חֶבֶל
The concrete cord image shows how this root can describe distress as something that binds.
chavalim: Pangs, especially the pains of labor.
חֲבָלִים
This is the same word form used for the travail that seizes the reader here.
לִמַּדְתְּ
limmadet
GROWS FROM
למד
lamad
To learn or be trained; in this verb form, to teach.
The root holds learning and teaching together: what is learned can be imparted and formed in others. Here the teaching has shaped people into leaders who stand over the one who taught them.
ALSO GROWS
lamad: To learn or be trained.
לָמַד
Teaching grows from the same root as learning, linking the formation of others to what has first been learned.
limmud: A trained person or disciple.
לִמּוּד
The learner becomes one who has been formed; in this verse, those formed are described as leaders over their teacher.
יֹאחֲזוּךְ
yo'achezukh
GROWS FROM
אחז
achaz
To grasp, hold, or seize.
The verb translated “take thee” means to seize or hold fast. It makes the labor pains an active grip: the distress catches and holds the reader.
ALSO GROWS
achaz: To grasp, seize, or hold.
אָחַז
This is the root verb behind the verse’s image of pain taking hold.
achuzzah: A possession or holding; an estate.
אֲחֻזָּה
The related noun carries holding into the sense of something held or possessed, deepening the verse’s image of a grip that claims its object.
THE PATTERN
What a person sets in motion can return as an authority or consequence that governs them.
They have set up kings, but not by me: they have made princes, and I knew it not: of their silver and their gold have they made them idols, that they may be cut off.Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices.THE THREAD
The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.The “sorrows” in both verses translate forms of חבל (chaval), a root family that also names cords. Psalm 18 pictures those cords surrounding the speaker; Jeremiah renders the binding pressure as labor pains that seize.
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