What Does Jeremiah 4:20 Mean in the King James?
Destruction upon destruction is cried; for the whole land is spoiled: suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment.
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 describes breakage piling on breakage until the devastation reaches even the tents and curtains that shelter the speaker.
THE MEANING
One rupture stacks on another until devastation covers the land and reaches the speaker’s own tents and curtains. The verse lets you face the loss of shelter without disguising it as a promise of quick restoration.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that your private shelter can remain untouched while everything around you collapses is undone here: the tents and curtains are spoiled along with the land.
THE ROOT
שֶׁבֶר
shever
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, shatter, or fracture.
“destruction” in this verse is shever. The phrase repeats shever, breakage upon breakage, so the cry names calamity as a succession of fractures. A branch of this root also names breaking waves, suggesting breakers rolling over what stands before them.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The verb makes the breakage an action, not merely a ruined condition.
mishbar: A breaker, or breaking wave.
מִשְׁבָּר
This branch gives the repeated destruction the force of waves breaking over what they meet.
שֻׁדָּדָה
shuddadah
GROWS FROM
שדד
sh-d-d
To plunder, devastate, or lay waste violently.
“spoiled” in this verse is shuddadah. The same plunder-root describes the ruined land and the ruined tents. The devastation moves from the broad landscape into the speaker’s nearest shelter.
ALSO GROWS
shod: Violence, devastation, or plunder.
שֹׁד
This noun keeps the force of the damage visible: what happens is violent despoiling.
shoded: A plunderer or devastator.
שׁוֹדֵד
This branch points to the force that strips away what had been held or sheltered.
THE PATTERN
When devastation takes hold, it reaches from the larger landscape into the structures that gave people shelter.
And, behold, there came a great wind from the wilderness, and smote the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young men, and they are dead; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken: my children are gone forth of me, and they are not: there is none to stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up my curtains.As for these things which ye behold, the days will come, in the which there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.THE THREAD
Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.The Hebrew for “destruction” here, shever, shares its root with mishbar, the word for the breakers rendered “waves” in the psalm. The shared root lets Jeremiah’s repeated breakage echo as breakers rolling over what stands before them.
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