What Does Jeremiah 51:13 Mean in the King James?
O thou that dwellest upon many waters, abundant in treasures, thine end is come, and the measure of thy covetousness.
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
Your abundance does not enlarge your horizon forever: the gain you gather already has a measure and an end.
THE MEANING
You can be surrounded by many waters and filled with stores, yet neither abundance makes your dwelling permanent. Your gain has a measure, and its limit is arriving.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse undoes is that having more makes your place secure; wealth has a measure and cannot keep the end from arriving.
THE ROOT
בִּצְעֵךְ
bitse'ekh
GROWS FROM
בצע
b-ṣ-ʿ
To cut off or break off; the related noun means gain or profit, often unjust gain.
Here covetousness is your gain or profit, rather than a free-floating desire. The root’s cutting-off sense adds an edge to the verse: the gain sits beside an arriving end as something finite, not endless security.
ALSO GROWS
betsaʿ: Gain or profit, often unjust gain.
בֶּצַע
This noun names the profit translated as covetousness in the verse.
batsaʿ: To cut off or break off.
בָּצַע
This verbal branch brings a cutting-off resonance beside the declaration that the end has come.
שֹׁכֶנֶת
shokhenet
GROWS FROM
שכן
sh-k-n
To settle or dwell.
“dwellest” in this verse is shokhenet. The Hebrew word for dwelling shares its root with mishkan, a dwelling place. Your settled place is named alongside waters and treasures, but the verse gives no guarantee that abundance makes it permanent.
ALSO GROWS
shakan: To dwell or settle.
שָׁכַן
This is the verb beneath the verse’s description of dwelling.
mishkan: Dwelling place, tabernacle.
מִשְׁכָּן
The shared root links this dwelling to the broader idea of a place where something settles.
THE PATTERN
Accumulated wealth cannot make a dwelling permanent or secure its possessor from loss.
There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt.For when he dieth he shall carry nothing away: his glory shall not descend after him.But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?THE THREAD
For from the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness; and from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely.The Hebrew word-family behind “covetousness” names gain or profit in both verses. Read together, they show how a life centered on gain meets its measure in the very thing it has gathered.
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