What Does Jeremiah 39:2 Mean in the King James?
And in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, in the fourth month, the ninth day of the month, the city was broken up.
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 verb translated “broken up” is baqa, the same verb for the deep bursting open, the sea splitting, and dawn breaking through.
THE MEANING
The verse makes rupture exact: the city is breached, and the day of its breaking remains named. It gives the reader language for a breach as an opening forced into what had been enclosed, without softening its cost.
THE ROOT
וַתִּבָּקַע
vattibbaqa
GROWS FROM
בקע
b-q-ʿ
to split, cleave, or burst open
“broken up” in this verse is vattibbaqa. The city’s boundary is split open with the same root used when the deep’s fountains burst open and when the waters divide. Baqa names the breach itself; what passes through that opening, flood, passage, or dawn, depends on the scene.
ALSO GROWS
nibqe'u: were broken open; burst forth
נִבְקְעוּ
Genesis uses this form for the fountains of the great deep bursting open, showing the same root at the scale of the earth’s foundations.
vayyibbaqe'u: were split; divided
וַיִּבָּקְעוּ
Exodus uses this form for the waters dividing, where a split boundary becomes a passage.
yibbaqa: break forth
יִבָּקַע
Isaiah uses this form for light breaking forth like morning, showing that the same verb can describe dawn opening through darkness.
THE PATTERN
Baqa names a boundary splitting open, while what comes through depends on what the opening releases.
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward.THE THREAD
Then the city was broken up, and all the men of war fled, and went forth out of the city by night by the way of the gate between the two walls, which was by the king’s garden; (now the Chaldeans were by the city round about:) and they went by the way of the plain.Jeremiah 52:7 uses the same baqa verb for the city’s breach, then shows its immediate consequence: the men of war flee through the opening by night. The parallel makes the force of this image concrete: bodies moving through a breached boundary.
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