What Does Jeremiah 48:3 Mean in the King James?
A voice of crying shall be from Horonaim, spoiling and great destruction.
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 pairs plunder with breaking in a hiss of sound, making devastation itself seem to speak.
THE MEANING
A cry rises from Horonaim, carrying the sound of plunder and great breaking. The place is heard through the devastation moving through it; ruin has a voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that devastation can remain an abstraction dissolves here: the verse gives it a voice rising from a particular place.
THE ROOT
שֶׁבֶר
shever
GROWS FROM
שבר
sh-b-r
To break, shatter; a breaking or fracture.
The word rendered “destruction” is a breaking, so the devastation is pictured as something fractured. Though שֹׁד (shod, plunder) comes from a different root, its matching “sh” sound makes the pair ring together: plunder and breaking become one concentrated blow.
ALSO GROWS
shavar: To break or shatter.
שָׁבַר
The verb makes the noun’s ruin an act of breaking, not an abstract condition.
shavur: Broken.
שָׁבוּר
This form names the state left by the breaking at the heart of “great destruction.”
שֹׁד
shod
GROWS FROM
שדד
sh-d-d
To devastate, despoil, or plunder.
“Spoiling” carries the force of violent despoiling: what is here is seized or laid waste. Beside shever, the sound echo lets the line hold both stripping away and breaking at once.
ALSO GROWS
shadad: To devastate or plunder.
שָׁדַד
The verb shows the force behind the devastation named in the verse.
shadud: Despoiled or devastated.
שָׁדוּד
This form evokes what remains after the act of plundering.
צְעָקָה
tse'aqah
GROWS FROM
צעק
ts-ʿ-q
To cry aloud or call out.
“crying” in this verse is tse'aqah. The phrase is “a voice of outcry,” so the damage does not stay silent or distant. The cry rises from Horonaim itself, giving the ruin a human sound and a place.
ALSO GROWS
tsa'aq: To cry out.
צָעַק
The verb shows the voiced response carried by the noun “crying.”
tso'eq: One who cries out.
צֹעֵק
This form keeps the cry attached to the person who gives it voice.
THE PATTERN
When a people or place is crushed, suffering becomes audible as an outcry that bears witness to the damage.
My heart shall cry out for Moab; his fugitives shall flee unto Zoar, an heifer of three years old: for by the mounting up of Luhith with weeping shall they go it up; for in the way of Horonaim they shall raise up a cry of destruction.And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows;And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.THE THREAD
My heart shall cry out for Moab; his fugitives shall flee unto Zoar, an heifer of three years old: for by the mounting up of Luhith with weeping shall they go it up; for in the way of Horonaim they shall raise up a cry of destruction.Isaiah names Horonaim again and joins it to a “cry of destruction,” using שֶׁבֶר (shever), the same breaking word heard here. Jeremiah’s pairing of plunder and breaking makes that cry carry the fuller weight of what has happened.
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