What Does Jeremiah 14:6 Mean in the King James?

And the wild asses did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes did fail, because there was no grass.

Jeremiah 14:6 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The wild asses are reduced to drawing in air itself, and even their eyes are spent because no grass remains.

THE MEANING

Deprivation reaches even creatures adapted to the open land: they stand on the heights and pant at the wind, while their eyes give out for lack of grass. Their wildness offers no shelter from a world that no longer feeds them.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that strength or self-sufficiency guarantees survival: even the untamed are exhausted when what sustains life is gone.

THE ROOT

שָׁאֲפוּ

sha'afu

GROWS FROM

שׁאף

sha'af

To pant, gasp, draw in, or pant after something.

“snuffed” in this verse is sha'afu. This verb holds physical panting and straining after something in the same word. Here the asses draw at the air while the ground has nothing to feed them.

ALSO GROWS

sha'af: To pant, gasp, or long for.

שָׁאַף

It names both the body’s effort to draw in air and the intensity of reaching after what is desired.

she'ifah: Inhalation; drawing in.

שְׁאִיפָה

This noun preserves the physical act behind the verse’s image: the animals pull air inward, but it cannot replace food.

רוּחַ

ruach

GROWS FROM

רוח

ruach

Moving air, wind, or breath.

Ruach names wind and breath with one word, while the related form revachah names relief or breathing room. The asses can draw in ruach, but the air cannot restore the life the absent grass sustains.

ALSO GROWS

ruach: Wind, breath, or spirit, according to context.

רוּחַ

Here the animals pant for wind, and the same word also carries the sense of breath.

revachah: Relief, respite, or breathing room.

רְוָחָה

This related form brings a sense of room and relief into the sound-shape; the verse shows air without the release from deprivation that real sustenance would bring.

THE PATTERN

When the ground withholds what sustains life, creatures make the deprivation visible through their bodies.

Yea, the hind also calved in the field, and forsook it, because there was no grass.

Jeremiah 14:5 · KJVThe hind abandons her newborn in the same barren landscape where the wild asses pant for air.

The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

Joel 1:20 · KJVThe beasts’ cry exposes how dried waters and ruined pasture make the whole wilderness suffer.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

Romans 8:22 · KJVCreation’s shared groaning gives voice to the bodily distress seen here in creatures deprived of sustenance.

THE THREAD

A wild ass used to the wilderness, that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure; in her occasion who can turn her away? all they that seek her will not weary themselves; in her month they shall find her.

Jeremiah 2:24 · KJV

This uses the same Hebrew roots, ⁨שׁאף⁩ and ⁨רוח⁩, for a wild ass snuffing the wind. There the image emphasizes unrestrained desire; here the same motion appears beside the absence of grass, marking the extremity of need.

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