What Does Jeremiah 48:46 Mean in the King James?
Woe be unto thee, O Moab! the people of Chemosh perisheth: for thy sons are taken captives, and thy daughters captives.
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
Moab’s collapse is both a people perishing and its next generation carried away: the verse joins loss to captivity.
THE MEANING
The verse gives communal devastation a human shape: the people perish, and their sons and daughters are taken captive. It speaks plainly about the loss of a people and the capture of its future.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It overturns the idea that a people’s ruin is only a matter of borders or rulers; the verse names children carried away as part of the loss.
THE ROOT
אָבַד
ʾābad
GROWS FROM
אבד
To perish, be lost, or lose the way
“perisheth” in this verse is ʾābad. The root holds perishing and being lost together. The verse names more than defeat: it names a people slipping toward disappearance, while its next generation is carried away.
ALSO GROWS
ʾoved: Perishing; lost
אֹבֵד
In Deuteronomy 26:5, the phrase “ready to perish” uses this form, echoing the precarious state named for Moab’s people.
ʾavedah: A lost thing; something missing
אֲבֵדָה
This branch makes the root’s language of loss concrete: what perishes is also what becomes absent.
שְׁבִי
shevi
GROWS FROM
שׁבה
To take captive; capture
“captives” in this verse is shevi. The root gives both capture and captivity a shared word family. Sons and daughters are named within the same captivity, extending the loss across the next generation.
ALSO GROWS
shavah: To take captive
שָׁבָה
The act of taking belongs to the same root family as the captivity into which Moab’s children are carried.
shevi: Captivity
שְׁבִי
The sons are taken into this captivity, while the daughters are likewise named in captivity; the paired lines hold both within the same loss.
THE PATTERN
A people’s undoing becomes visible in who is carried away from it.
Thy sons and thy daughters shall be given unto another people, and thine eyes shall look, and fail with longing for them all the day long: and there shall be no might in thine hand.Her adversaries are the chief, her enemies prosper; for the LORD hath afflicted her for the multitude of her transgressions: her children are gone into captivity before the enemy.And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.THE THREAD
And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous:“Ready to perish” uses אָבֵד (ʾoved, “perishing” or “lost”), from the same root as “perisheth” in Jeremiah. Here the root marks an ancestor at the edge of loss as the verse names a people arising from that starting point, opening a sharp echo beside Moab’s threatened disappearance.
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