What Does Jeremiah 5:10 Mean in the King James?
Go ye up upon her walls, and destroy; but make not a full end: take away her battlements; for they are not the LORD’s.
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 sentence separates what does not belong to the LORD from the whole that must not be brought to an end.
THE MEANING
You encounter an order that is openly violent: climb her walls, ruin them, and strip away her battlements. The same sentence sets a boundary around that violence: no full end is permitted, and the things removed are named as not the LORD’s. The destruction and its limit remain side by side.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that judgment must mean total erasure: ruin is commanded here, but a full end is forbidden.
THE ROOT
כָּלָה
kalah
GROWS FROM
כ־ל־ה
k-l-h
To finish, complete, or consume.
The phrase “full end” grows from a verb meaning to finish or consume. Ruin is allowed to proceed, but the command explicitly refuses completion: the destruction itself has a limit.
ALSO GROWS
kalah: To finish, complete, or consume.
כָּלָה
This verb supplies the force behind “make a full end”; the command forbids bringing the destruction to completion.
kilyon: Destruction or consumption.
כִּלָּיוֹן
This noun carries the same root toward destruction, showing how completion can become total loss.
נְטִישׁוֹתֶיהָ
netishoteha
GROWS FROM
נ־ט־שׁ
n-t-sh
To leave, forsake, or cast aside; the related noun can describe an outshoot or tendril.
The rare word rendered “battlements” is also glossed as shoots or branches. Its root’s language of leaving and forsaking resonates with the order to remove these extensions, which the verse distinguishes from what must not be utterly ended.
ALSO GROWS
natash: To leave, forsake, or cast aside.
נָטַשׁ
This verbal branch echoes the command to strip away what is disowned as not the LORD’s.
netishah: A shoot, tendril, or branch; also rendered battlement here.
נְטִישָׁה
This branch keeps an image of outward growth beneath the military rendering of the word.
וְשַׁחֲתוּ
ve-shachatu
GROWS FROM
ש־ח־ת
sh-ḥ-t
To ruin, corrupt, or destroy.
“destroy” in this verse is ve-shachatu. This root carries the force of ruin and corruption, so the command does not soften the violence of the passage. Its limit comes from the separate instruction not to bring everything to an end.
ALSO GROWS
shachat: To ruin, destroy, or corrupt.
שָׁחַת
This verb names the destructive action directed at the walls.
mashchit: A destroyer or one who brings ruin.
מַשְׁחִית
This related form gives agency to the same root’s destructive force.
THE PATTERN
Judgment can strip away what does not belong while stopping short of total erasure.
Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.Behold, the eyes of the Lord GOD are upon the sinful kingdom, and I will destroy it from off the face of the earth; saving that I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob, saith the LORD.Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.THE THREAD
For I am with thee, saith the LORD, to save thee: though I make a full end of all nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will I not make a full end of thee: but I will correct thee in measure, and will not leave thee altogether unpunished.Jeremiah 30:11 repeats the same root כ־ל־ה (k-l-h; kalah, to finish or consume) in the phrase “make a full end,” then limits that end for Jacob. The shared root makes the boundary in Jeremiah 5:10 part of a recurring distinction between real ruin and complete destruction.
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