What Does Jeremiah 18:21 Mean in the King James?
Therefore deliver up their children to the famine, and pour out their blood by the force of the sword; and let their wives be bereaved of their children, and be widows; and let their men be put to death; let their young men be slain by the sword in battle.
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 first verb makes this devastation a sequence of handovers: the children are given to famine, and the sword takes the men.
THE MEANING
You are confronted with a plea for collective destruction in unsoftened terms: children are handed to famine, women are bereaved and widowed, and men are killed. The verse holds bodily slaughter and the rupture of family life in the same frame. Its language leaves the violence explicit.
THE ROOT
תֵּן
ten
GROWS FROM
נתן
n-t-n
give, set, place
“deliver up” in this verse is ten. The verb is נתן, “give, set, place,” in the imperative: the children are placed within famine’s reach. Its family includes מַתָּנָה (mattanah), “gift,” and נְתִינִים (netinim), “those given”; here, the verb of giving names a violent handover.
ALSO GROWS
mattanah: gift; something given
מַתָּנָה
It shares the give-root with תֵּן, revealing the range of this root from gift to forced transfer.
netinim: those given; a group assigned to service
נְתִינִים
Its sense of being given echoes the children being placed into famine’s reach.
חֶרֶב
ḥerev
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
dry up, become waste or desolate
The consonant family carries the sense of drying up or laying waste alongside the word for sword. That echo binds the weapon to desolation as the verse traces death through households.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārav: to dry up or become desolate
חָרַב
The shared consonants connect the sword with the language of a place or people laid waste.
ḥorbāh: ruin, desolation
חָרְבָּה
This branch makes audible the devastation surrounding the sword’s repeated blows.
שַׁכֻּלוֹת
shakkulot
GROWS FROM
שכל
sh-k-l
be bereaved, especially through the loss of children
“bereaved” in this verse is shakkulot. The root names bereavement through the loss of children, making this more specific than a general loss. Beside “widows,” it maps devastation across both the child and spouse bonds.
ALSO GROWS
shākal: to be bereaved of children; to miscarry
שָׁכַל
This verb shares the root of “bereaved” and keeps the focus on loss across generations.
shakkul: bereaved; childless
שַׁכּוּל
This related form names the condition the verse assigns to the wives.
THE PATTERN
Collective violence becomes visible through bodies killed and family bonds broken.
They that be slain with the sword are better than they that be slain with hunger: for these pine away, stricken through for want of the fruits of the field.Yet was she carried away, she went into captivity: her young children also were dashed in pieces at the top of all the streets: and they cast lots for her honourable men, and all her great men were bound in chains.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
And I will bring a sword upon you, that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant: and when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you; and ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.“Ye shall be delivered” renders a passive form of נתן, the same give-root as Jeremiah’s “deliver up.” Both verses frame catastrophe as a handing-over, with the sword and other forms of death closing around a people.
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