What Does Jeremiah 22:20 Mean in the King James?
Go up to Lebanon, and cry; and lift up thy voice in Bashan, and cry from the passages: for all thy lovers are destroyed.
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 says the ones called “lovers” are shattered, making the whole landscape echo with the grief of a broken bond.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks into the moment when every bond expected to hold has broken. Your grief rises from the heights and crossings, voiced in the open rather than hidden or softened. The words let the loss stand as it is.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being loved by many guarantees that you will be held: the verse names a moment when all those bonds fail together.
THE ROOT
נִשְׁבְּרוּ
nishberu
GROWS FROM
שבר
To break, smash, or shatter.
The verb behind “destroyed” carries the image of shattering. It adds the fracture of a bond to the verse’s loss: the lovers are not only absent; they are broken.
ALSO GROWS
shever: Breakage, fracture, ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This noun makes the root’s image of a break visible in the verse’s report of collapse.
shavur: Broken, shattered.
שָׁבוּר
This form carries the same root into the state left behind when something breaks.
מְאַהֲבַיִךְ
me'ahavayikh
GROWS FROM
אהב
To love, feel attachment, or desire.
“lovers” in this verse is me'ahavayikh. The Hebrew names these bonds through love, not as faceless sources of support. The verse holds the language of affection beside the report of shattering, so the loss is intimate as well as total.
ALSO GROWS
ahavah: Love, affection.
אַהֲבָה
The noun shares the root that names the ones whose breaking is mourned.
ohev: One who loves; a lover.
אֹהֵב
This form names a person through the same love-root as the verse’s “lovers.”
THE PATTERN
When bonds named as love or refuge fail, Scripture gives the abandonment a voice instead of disguising it.
She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.THE THREAD
The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.Jeremiah’s “destroyed” and Psalm 34’s “broken” share the Hebrew root שבר (sh-b-r), to break or shatter. The same root carries the rupture from collapsed bonds into the heart, while Psalm 34 places nearness beside that break.
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