What Does Jeremiah 50:35 Mean in the King James?
A sword is upon the Chaldeans, saith the LORD, and upon the inhabitants of Babylon, and upon her princes, and upon her wise men.
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 חֶרֶב (ḥerev, sword) shares its root with חָרֵב (ḥārēv, desolate), so Babylon stands beneath a blade already carrying the word for its ruin.
THE MEANING
The line lays the sword across a whole civic order: the people, its rulers, and its wise are all named. Rank and knowledge do not put anyone outside the reach of the violence it names.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that status or expertise can guarantee protection from violence reaching the whole community.
THE ROOT
חֶרֶב
ḥerev
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
To be dry or become desolate.
The word for sword shares its consonants with words for dryness and desolation, binding the blade to the ruin it leaves. In this verse, the threat names both a weapon and the city’s devastation.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārēv: Desolate; laid waste.
חָרֵב
Its consonants echo the sword’s root, joining the weapon with the ruin it brings.
ḥorbāh: A waste place; desolation.
חָרְבָּה
This branch names the condition left behind when a place is laid waste.
חֲכָמָיו
ḥăḵāmāyw
GROWS FROM
חכם
ḥ-k-m
To be wise or act with skill and competence.
“wise men” in this verse is ḥăḵāmāyw. The verse places Babylon’s wise among those exposed to the sword. This word family includes both understanding and practiced skill, so the city’s knowing and doing capacities are also in view.
ALSO GROWS
ḥokhmāh: Wisdom.
חָכְמָה
The wise men belong to the same word family as wisdom itself; the verse includes the city’s knowledge among its exposed powers.
ḥākām: Wise; skillful.
חָכָם
The root can describe practiced competence as well as discernment, widening the reach of “wise men” beyond abstract thought.
THE PATTERN
When judgment falls on a powerful city, it reaches the people, rulers, and skilled systems that sustain it.
A sword is upon the liars; and they shall dote: a sword is upon her mighty men; and they shall be dismayed.For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water, The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator.And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.THE THREAD
Ye that have escaped the sword, go away, stand not still: remember the LORD afar off, and let Jerusalem come into your mind.Jeremiah 51:50 uses the same Hebrew word, חֶרֶב (ḥerev, sword), for the danger some escape. Its closing image points beyond Babylon’s devastation: Yerushalayim (יְרוּשָׁלַיִם, Jerusalem), the horizon of wholeness.
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