What Does Jeremiah 50:2 Mean in the King James?
Declare ye among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard; publish, and conceal not: say, Babylon is taken, Bel is confounded, Merodach is broken in pieces; her idols are confounded, her images are broken in pieces.
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 command makes Babylon’s fall impossible to hide, while its Hebrew name carries the Bible’s own echo of confusion.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now wherever a power seems beyond question: its capture can be named in public, and its gods are not shielded from exposure. The report reaches both the city and the things it trusts: Babylon is taken, Bel is shamed, and its images are shattered.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this overturns is that a power becomes untouchable when its name is feared and its images are honored; here both the city and its gods are captured, shamed, and broken.
THE ROOT
בָּבֶל
Bavel
GROWS FROM
בלל
biblical wordplay
In Genesis 11:9, בָּבֶל (Bavel, “Babel/Babylon”) is explicitly played against בָּלַל (balal, “mix” or “confuse”). This is the Bible’s own wordplay, not a claim about the name’s historical derivation.
The KJV’s “Babylon” hides the Hebrew name Bavel, which Genesis connects by wordplay to confusion. Here that named power is publicly exposed as capturable.
ALSO GROWS
balal: Mix, mingle; in Genesis 11:9, confuse.
בָּלַל
Genesis explicitly links the sound of Babel to the confusion of languages.
belil: Mixture; mixed fodder.
בְּלִיל
This branch keeps the root’s concrete sense of things blended together, echoing the biblical wordplay in Babylon’s name.
הַשְׁמִיעוּ
hashmi'u
GROWS FROM
שמע
Hear; in this causative form, make heard or cause to hear.
The command to publish occurs twice, and both times it means to make the report heard. Set beside “conceal not,” it turns Babylon’s fall into news that rings openly among the nations.
ALSO GROWS
shemaʿ: Hear, listen.
שְׁמַע
The same root underlies the act of hearing that this proclamation sets in motion.
shemuʿah: Report, tidings, news.
שְׁמוּעָה
A report is something heard, fitting the verse’s repeated command to make Babylon’s fall audible.
חַת
ḥat
GROWS FROM
חתת
Be shattered, dismayed, or terrified.
The same root describes Merodach and then Babylon’s idols: both the named god and its images share the same collapse. English repeats “broken in pieces,” while Hebrew makes the shared verbal seed audible.
ALSO GROWS
ḥat: Shattered or dismayed; used of Merodach here.
חַת
The god’s own name is paired with the verb of shattering.
ḥattu: They were shattered; used of the images here.
חַתּוּ
The repeated root carries the shattering from Merodach to the idols themselves.
THE PATTERN
When false powers are exposed, scripture makes their failure visible and the news of their fall public.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle: your carriages were heavy loaden; they are a burden to the weary beast.And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.THE THREAD
Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.Genesis connects בָּבֶל (Bavel, “Babel”) by wordplay with בָּלַל (balal, “mix” or “confuse”); Jeremiah names Babylon with that same Hebrew name. The proclamation of Babylon’s capture makes the confusion carried in its biblical name part of the city’s exposure.
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