What Does Jeremiah 48:25 Mean in the King James?
The horn of Moab is cut off, and his arm is broken, saith the LORD.
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 horn and arm turn Moab’s power into a body, and both its outward reach and its ability to act are severed.
THE MEANING
The verse presents Moab’s power as a horn that projects and an arm that acts; both are cut off or broken by the LORD’s decree. What once extended its strength can no longer reach or act. As you read, the verse exposes visible power as something that can be brought to an end.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that visible strength is self-sustaining and beyond interruption: Moab’s reach is cut off and its capacity to act is broken.
THE ROOT
קֶרֶן
qeren
GROWS FROM
קרן
q-r-n
Horn; the root also forms a verb for sending out rays.
“horn” in this verse is qeren. The Hebrew qeren shares its consonants with qaran, “to shine” or “send out rays”: both images extend outward from a center. Moab’s power is pictured as projecting reach, and its cutting off ends that reach.
ALSO GROWS
qeren: Horn; also a biblical image of strength or raised power.
קֶרֶן
This is the verse’s image for Moab’s power as something that projects outward.
qaran: To shine or send out rays.
קָרַן
This related form adds the image of something extending outward from a source, like the horn’s projection.
נִשְׁבָּרָה
nishberah
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break or shatter.
The arm is broken with the root שבר, which also forms shever, “ruin” or “calamity.” The Hebrew word family lets an injury to the arm name a wider collapse of power.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The word in the verse comes from this root, naming the arm’s fracture.
shever: A break, ruin, or calamity.
שֶׁבֶר
This branch shows how the root can describe not just a broken limb but a state of ruin.
THE PATTERN
Scripture pictures power as a horn or arm that can be lifted, broken, or cut away.
All the horns of the wicked also will I cut off; but the horns of the righteous shall be exalted.Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it, to make it strong to hold the sword.And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;THE THREAD
For the arms of the wicked shall be broken: but the LORD upholdeth the righteous.This verse uses the same image of the arm and the same root, שבר, for breaking. The echo makes Jeremiah’s image part of a recurring scriptural picture of power losing its capacity to act.
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