What Does Jeremiah 48:9 Mean in the King James?
Give wings unto Moab, that it may flee and get away: for the cities thereof shall be desolate, without any to dwell therein.
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 (מוֹאָב, Moʾav, “from the father”) is given wings not toward safety, but away from cities that no longer have room for life.
THE MEANING
Moab is given wings to flee as its cities become empty. The verse holds escape and devastation in one image: the people leave, and no one remains to dwell there.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that flight itself means safety: here, wings are needed because devastation is emptying the cities.
THE ROOT
לְשַׁמָּה
ləshammāh
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
To become desolate or appalled; to be left in ruin.
English “desolate” can sound like simple vacancy, but שׁמם (shamem, to become desolate or appalled) holds ruin and stunned response in the same root. Its noun branch שְׁמָמָה (shemamah, desolation or waste) names the devastation itself: these cities are not merely quiet; they are laid waste.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation, waste
שְׁמָמָה
This noun names the ruined condition the cities enter, making desolation more than the temporary absence of people.
shamem: Become desolate; be appalled
שָׁמֵם
The root can describe both physical ruin and stunned response, holding the devastation and its horror together.
THE PATTERN
Judgment makes flight and emptied dwellings two parts of one event.
The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein.Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,Then let them which are in Judæa flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto.THE THREAD
And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.Jeremiah uses the same root, שׁמם (shamem, become desolate), for Judah’s cities. The repeated word ties Moab’s emptied cities to another devastated land: in both, the ruin reaches the point where no one remains to inhabit the place.
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