What Does Jeremiah 15:3 Mean in the King James?
And I will appoint over them four kinds, saith the LORD: the sword to slay, and the dogs to tear, and the fowls of the heaven, and the beasts of the earth, to devour and destroy.
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
The Hebrew’s “four kinds” is literally “four families,” and “appoint” comes from a verb also used for mustering and visitation, so judgment arrives as an assembled force.
THE MEANING
This verse confronts you with judgment in bodily form: the sword kills, dogs tear, and birds and beasts consume and destroy. Its words leave no abstraction between judgment and exposed bodies.
THE ROOT
וּפָקַדְתִּי
ufaqadti
GROWS FROM
פקד
Attend to, visit, muster, or appoint.
The verb translated “appoint” belongs to a word family that also describes visiting and mustering. Here, the appointed force reads as an assembled reckoning, while the verse keeps its violence explicit.
ALSO GROWS
paqad: Visit, attend to, muster, or appoint.
פָּקַד
These uses hold visitation and assignment within the same word family as the act that sets the agents over them.
pequddah: Oversight, charge, or visitation.
פְּקֻדָּה
This related noun keeps the sense of an assigned charge attached to the verb “appoint.”
לְהַשְׁחִית
lehashchit
GROWS FROM
שחת
Ruin, corrupt, or destroy.
“destroy” in this verse is lehashchit. The final verb names ruin as the outcome of the consuming sequence. The same root can describe corruption as well as destruction, so the word carries the sense of something being brought into ruin.
ALSO GROWS
hishchit: To ruin, corrupt, or destroy.
הִשְׁחִית
This verb form carries the same range of ruin and destruction heard at the end of the verse.
mashchit: A destroyer, one who ruins.
מַשְׁחִית
The related word names an agent of destruction, echoing the verse’s named agents: sword, dogs, birds, and beasts.
THE PATTERN
Judgment becomes visible through bodies exposed to violence, deprivation, and consumption.
And thy carcase shall be meat unto all fowls of the air, and unto the beasts of the earth, and no man shall fray them away.For thus saith the Lord GOD; How much more when I send my four sore judgments upon Jerusalem, the sword, and the famine, and the noisome beast, and the pestilence, to cut off from it man and beast?And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.THE THREAD
Therefore thus saith the LORD God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people; Ye have scattered my flock, and driven them away, and have not visited them: behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings, saith the LORD.The root פקד (paqad), translated “appoint” in Jeremiah 15:3 and “visit” here, links assignment with visitation and reckoning. That shared word lets the appointed agents read as judgment being set in motion.
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