What Does Jeremiah 30:15 Mean in the King James?
Why criest thou for thine affliction? thy sorrow is incurable for the multitude of thine iniquity: because thy sins were increased, I have done these things unto thee.
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 KJV’s “affliction” carries the image of a breaking, which the verse binds to multiplied crookedness and missing while placing the blow in God’s own speech.
THE MEANING
Your grief is a cry over breaking, and the wound is bound in the sentence to multiplied crookedness and missing. God’s voice claims the action, “I have done these things unto thee”, so pain, consequence, and divine agency remain together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that this wound can be read apart from the multiplied crookedness and missing named beside it. It also refuses to make the blow anonymous: God says, “I have done these things unto thee.”
THE ROOT
שִׁבְרֵךְ
shibrekh
GROWS FROM
שבר
To break, fracture, or shatter; the related noun describes breakage or ruin.
The word translated “affliction” carries the image of a break. The root lets the cry sound as a cry over brokenness, while leaving the English word’s meaning intact.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The verb gives the action inside the affliction: something has been broken.
shever: Breakage, fracture, or ruin.
שֶׁבֶר
This noun makes the breaking itself audible in the cry over affliction.
עֲוֹנֵךְ
ʿavonekh
GROWS FROM
עון
Crookedness: what is bent or distorted, including the culpability bound to it.
“Iniquity” also carries the concrete sense of crookedness, what is bent out of line. Beside the multiplying missing and the wound, that image makes the verse’s stated connection more tangible.
ALSO GROWS
ʿavon: Crookedness; iniquity.
עָוֹן
The word names the crookedness the verse places beside the wound.
ʿavonot: Crookednesses; plural iniquities.
עֲוֹנוֹת
The plural form shows how the same word can name accumulated crooked acts.
חַטֹּאתָיִךְ
chattotayikh
GROWS FROM
חטא
To miss, fail, or miss the mark.
The plural “sins” grows from the language of missing. The verse says these missings have increased, so the English plural carries a repeated pattern rather than only an abstract label.
ALSO GROWS
chata: To miss, fail, or miss the mark.
חָטָא
The verb shows the act of missing that the verse says has increased.
chet: A missing or wrong.
חֵטְא
The noun names each miss that gathers into the plural “sins.”
THE PATTERN
Accumulated crookedness and repeated missing are bound to the wound that follows, rather than treated as unrelated facts.
Fools because of their transgression, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted.Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts.Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.THE THREAD
All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not; for I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the multitude of thine iniquity; because thy sins were increased.Both verses use עֲוֹן (ʿavon, crookedness) and חַטָּאת (chatta’t, missing or wrong) for the multiplied wrongs beside the wound. Verse 14 calls the injury a wound from an enemy; verse 15 carries that same account to its stark claim, “I have done these things unto thee.”
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