What Does Jeremiah 48:2 Mean in the King James?
There shall be no more praise of Moab: in Heshbon they have devised evil against it; come, and let us cut it off from being a nation. Also thou shalt be cut down, O Madmen; the sword shall pursue 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 Hebrew makes Madmen’s name echo its fate: the place is told to fall silent as the sword pursues.
THE MEANING
Moab’s praise disappears as a plan forms to erase it as a nation, and the sword pursues Madmen into silence. The verse speaks now in the unsoftened language of collective violence: acclaim offers no protection when a people is targeted for removal.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that renown makes a people safe: Moab’s acclaim ends while a plan to erase its nationhood is spoken aloud.
THE ROOT
תִּדֹּמִּי
tiddommi
GROWS FROM
דמם
d-m-m
Be silent, cease, become still.
The KJV says “cut down,” while the Hebrew verb carries the sense of falling silent or ceasing. It echoes the place-name Madmen (מַדְמֵן, Madmen), making the judgment sound bound to the place itself: Madmen is silenced as the sword pursues.
ALSO GROWS
dumiyyah: Silence, stillness.
דֻּמִיָּה
This branch shows that the root can name silence as a state; here that silence is imposed under threat.
demamah: Quiet, stillness.
דְּמָמָה
The shared root gives the verse’s silencing a sense of sound and movement brought to an end.
חָשְׁבוּ
chashvu
GROWS FROM
חשב
ḥ-sh-b
Think, reckon, devise, plan.
English separates Heshbon, the place, from “they devised,” the action, but Hebrew lets their shared consonants echo: reckoning becomes a plot. The threat is calculated, not spontaneous.
ALSO GROWS
ḥeshbon: Reckoning, account; also the place-name Heshbon.
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
The name of the place echoes the verb used for devising evil there.
maḥashavah: Thought, plan, design.
מַחֲשָׁבָה
This branch shows how the root moves from thought or calculation toward an intended course of action.
וְנַכְרִיתֶנָּה
venakhrithennah
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
Cut, sever, cut off.
“cut it off” in this verse is venakhrithennah. The plan names its target precisely: to cut Moab off from being a nation. The same root appears in covenant language, where a cut establishes a bond; here it names a cut meant to sever a people’s continuity.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: Cut a covenant; make a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb used for cutting a nation off can describe establishing a binding covenant.
keritut: Severance; a bill of divorce.
כְּרִיתֻת
This branch preserves the root’s force of a deliberate break in a relationship or bond.
THE PATTERN
A plan becomes part of violence before it reaches its target: the language of devising names the calculation behind the act.
But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect.A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.THE THREAD
In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:Jeremiah’s כָּרַת (karat, “cut off”) shares its root with Genesis’s “made a covenant”: כָּרַת בְּרִית (karat berit, literally “cut a covenant”). The shared root holds severing and binding together, showing how much force the word “cut” carries.
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