What Does Jeremiah 20:17 Mean in the King James?
Because he slew me not from the womb; or that my mother might have been my grave, and her womb to be always great with me.
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 word for “womb” shares its root with “compassion,” so the line turns a place of tenderness into the grave where the speaker wishes his life had ended before it began.
THE MEANING
There are moments when pain reaches so deep that existence itself feels like the injury, and the womb is imagined as a grave that would have ended life before it began. The verse gives that despair direct language without making it polite or covering it with reassurance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that anguish must be turned into gratitude or hope before it can be spoken.
THE ROOT
רֶחֶם
rechem
GROWS FROM
רחם
r-ḥ-m
To show compassion or tender care; רֶחֶם (rechem) names the womb.
The word for womb shares its root with compassion, placing the source of life and the language of tenderness inside the same sound. Here that womb is imagined as a grave, making the contrast stark.
ALSO GROWS
racham: To show compassion
רָחַם
The same root lets the verse’s word for womb echo the language of tenderness.
rachamim: Compassion, tender mercies
רַחֲמִים
This branch makes audible the compassion associated with the womb even as the verse imagines it as a grave.
קֶבֶר
qever
GROWS FROM
קבר
q-b-r
To bury; the grave is the place where the dead are laid.
The Hebrew names the womb directly as a grave. Its burial-root binds the imagined place of birth to the place where the dead are laid.
ALSO GROWS
qavar: To bury
קָבַר
The verb makes the grave in the verse an act of burial, not just a comparison.
qevurah: Burial
קְבוּרָה
This branch carries the image from the place of burial to the act itself.
הֲרַת
harat
GROWS FROM
הרה
h-r-h
To conceive or be pregnant.
“pregnant” in this verse is harat. The verse imagines the womb carrying the speaker across an age: its final word is עוֹלָם (olam, age or ages). Pregnancy becomes not just a beginning, but a condition imagined as having no exit.
ALSO GROWS
harah: To conceive; to be pregnant
הָרָה
This is the root’s core action, which the verse extends into an unending imagined pregnancy.
herayon: Pregnancy
הֵרָיוֹן
This related word keeps the focus on gestation, the carrying that the verse imagines continuing across an age.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents the womb as hidden life’s threshold, which lament can imagine as a grave when birth itself feels unbearable.
Because it shut not up the doors of my mother’s womb, nor hid sorrow from mine eyes.For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.THE THREAD
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.The Hebrew word רֶחֶם (rechem, womb) and רָחַם (racham, to show compassion) share the root רחם (r-ḥ-m). Isaiah voices compassion through the womb’s own root, sharpening the distance between that tenderness and Jeremiah’s image of the womb as a grave.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us