What Does Jeremiah 51:31 Mean in the King James?
One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken at one end,
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
What is caught at the city’s edge cannot stay there: its capture becomes a chain of reports racing toward the center.
THE MEANING
A breach does not stay at the edge: one runner meets another, one messenger another, until the king receives the report that his city is captured. The loss is no longer local; it is moving through the whole structure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a ruler can keep a loss confined to the edge dissolves here: the relay of messengers carries the capture straight to the center.
THE ROOT
נִלְכְּדָה
nilkedah
GROWS FROM
לכד
To catch, seize, or capture.
The word translated “taken” is a form of לָכַד, “to capture”: the city is not merely transferred but caught. The same root names both the act of seizing and the city’s state once seized, so the report describes a completed capture moving outward through the messengers.
ALSO GROWS
lakad: To catch, seize, or capture.
לָכַד
This is the active form of the root: capture is the action that leaves the city caught.
vayilkedu: And they captured.
וַיִּלְכְּדוּ
Judges 1:8 uses this form when Judah captures Jerusalem, showing the same root naming the concrete taking of a city.
THE PATTERN
A fallen stronghold becomes public through reports that carry its defeat from witness to witness.
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.And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.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
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.Jeremiah 50:2 uses the same root, לָכַד (lakad), for Babylon’s capture, then sends that fact outward as a public declaration. Here the capture is no longer proclamation alone: the chain of reports reaches the king himself.
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