What Does Jeremiah 51:34 Mean in the King James?
Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates, he hath cast me out.
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 looks like a list of harms is one consuming motion: the ruler swallows, fills his belly, then casts out what he has emptied.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the experience of power consuming you: it takes you in as nourishment, hollows you into an empty vessel, then ejects you after filling itself. The sequence keeps the injury visible as taking, depletion, and rejection.
THE ROOT
בְּלָעַנִי
belaʿani
GROWS FROM
בלע
To swallow, engulf, or consume whole.
“swallowed me up” in this verse is belaʿani. This root makes the harm feel total: the speaker is taken inside the ruler’s appetite. The same root returns in Jeremiah 51:44, where what Babylon swallowed is brought back out.
ALSO GROWS
bala: To swallow or engulf.
בָּלַע
It names the whole-taking image that the verse gives to conquest.
bela: Swallowing; by extension, destruction.
בֶּלַע
The root can name both the act of swallowing and the ruin it leaves behind.
אֲכָלַנִי
akhalani
GROWS FROM
אכל
To eat or consume.
“devoured me” in this verse is akhalani. The same root names eating and food, collapsing the line between the act and what is eaten. Alongside the belly and delicacies, the verse shows the speaker turned into provision for the one who takes.
ALSO GROWS
okhel: Food or provision.
אֹכֶל
It shows how the consumed person becomes what sustains the devourer.
maʾakhal: Food; something eaten.
מַאֲכָל
It echoes the verse’s image of the speaker becoming part of the ruler’s meal.
בָּבֶל
Bavel
GROWS FROM
בלל
To mix together or confuse.
“Babylon” in this verse is Bavel. Genesis links Bavel with balal, to mix or confuse, through a wordplay on the name. That echo gives the place-name a second layer: the power that swallows the speaker belongs to a confounding order.
ALSO GROWS
balal: To mix, mingle, or confuse.
בָּלַל
It gives the name’s scriptural wordplay its sense of disorientation.
Bavel: Babel or Babylon, linked with confusion in Genesis 11:9.
בָּבֶל
The name adds confusion to the verse’s picture of a power that consumes and empties.
THE PATTERN
Predatory power is pictured as appetite: it turns its targets into something to swallow or devour.
Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us:All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.THE THREAD
And I will punish Bel in Babylon, and I will bring forth out of his mouth that which he hath swallowed up: and the nations shall not flow together any more unto him: yea, the wall of Babylon shall fall.The same root בלע (bala, swallow or engulf) appears in this verse’s “swallowed me up” and in “that which he hath swallowed up.” Here the image turns: what Babylon takes into its mouth is brought back out, so engulfment is not the final word over what it consumed.
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