What Does Jeremiah 51:39 Mean in the King James?
In their heat I will make their feasts, and I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD.
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
Hebrew names the feast as a drinking-feast, so the revelry becomes the threshold to a sleep with no waking.
THE MEANING
The scene holds the feast, intoxication, rejoicing, and death in a single motion: the LORD makes them drunk, and they sleep without waking. The violence remains explicit; their joy accompanies the sentence rather than interrupting it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that celebration proves safety: here, rejoicing stands beside an unwaking sleep.
THE ROOT
מִשְׁתֵּיהֶם
mishtehem
GROWS FROM
שתה
to drink
The word translated “feasts” names drinking-feasts. The verse then moves to a separate root for making them drunk, tracing a concrete progression from drinking occasion to intoxication to unwaking sleep.
ALSO GROWS
shatah: to drink
שָׁתָה
This is the verb beneath the drinking-feast named in the verse.
mishteh: a drinking-feast or banquet
מִשְׁתֶּה
This is the singular form of the word used here for their feasts.
חֻמָּם
chummam
GROWS FROM
חמם
to be hot or heated
The scene begins with heat before it turns to drinking and sleep. The same root can carry the sense of burning anger, keeping bodily heat and emotional intensity close together in the opening phrase.
ALSO GROWS
cham: hot or warm
חַם
This preserves the root’s bodily sense of heat.
chemah: heat; burning anger
חֵמָה
This branch lets the opening phrase carry the possibility of anger as well as physical heat.
שְׁנַת
shenat
GROWS FROM
ישן
to sleep
The noun for sleep belongs to the same root as the verb for being asleep. Here, the added words “and not wake” make the image’s ending unmistakable: this is sleep sealed against return.
ALSO GROWS
yashen: sleeping or asleep
יָשֵׁן
This is the verb-form branch of the root that underlies the noun in the verse.
shenah: sleep
שֵׁנָה
This noun-form branch names the state that the verse says will not end in waking.
THE PATTERN
In judgment, feasting and self-assurance can precede sudden collapse.
Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you.And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. 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?How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.THE THREAD
And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.Daniel uses the same Hebrew sleep-root, ישן, for those who awake, while Jeremiah’s sleepers “not wake.” The shared root sets two endings against each other: sleep sealed shut here, awakening there.
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