What Does Jeremiah 51:4 Mean in the King James?
Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, and they that are thrust through in her streets.
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
English separates “slain” from “thrust through,” while Hebrew sets two piercing words side by side, making the bodies, not just the defeat, visible.
THE MEANING
The verse places the slain across the Chaldean land and the pierced in its streets. Death reaches into the city’s public paths, keeping the bodies in view. The cost of the city’s fall remains concrete.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a city’s fall is only a political event: the verse names the dead across its land and in its streets.
THE ROOT
חֲלָלִים
ḥălālîm
GROWS FROM
חלל
To pierce or wound; a pierced person, hence one slain.
The word for the slain carries the image of piercing inside it. Beside the next word, it makes the verse’s death toll bodily and specific.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālal: To pierce or wound.
חָלַל
This verb shows the bodily action preserved inside the word “slain.”
meḥōlāl: Pierced or wounded, as in Isaiah 53:5.
מְחֹלָל
The same root describes a body marked by a wound, keeping the verse’s dead from becoming abstract casualties.
מְדֻקָּרִים
məḏuqqārîm
GROWS FROM
דקר
To pierce, stab, or thrust through.
“thrust through” in this verse is məḏuqqārîm. The second expression intensifies the first: the verse moves from the slain to those pierced through. A distinct Hebrew root makes the wound explicit.
ALSO GROWS
dāqar: To pierce or stab; the verb used in Zechariah 12:10.
דָּקַר
The verb behind “thrust through” names a direct bodily act.
vayyidqor: And he pierced or thrust through, as in Numbers 25:8.
וַיִּדְקֹר
The same root describes a physical stabbing, preserving the concrete force of the word here.
וְנָפְלוּ
wənāfəlū
GROWS FROM
נפל
To fall or drop.
The verse does not only name the dead; it shows them falling across the land. This same root can also name a downfall, joining the bodies’ physical fall to a power’s collapse.
ALSO GROWS
nōfēl: Falling or one who falls.
נֹפֵל
This form keeps the root’s physical image of falling close to the verse’s slain.
mappālāh: Downfall or ruin, as in Jeremiah 50:32.
מַפָּלָה
The root can name both a body’s fall and a power’s downfall.
THE PATTERN
Scripture exposes violent power by naming the bodies and blood it leaves in public view.
The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth.The horseman lifteth up both the bright sword and the glittering spear: and there is a multitude of slain, and a great number of carcases; and there is none end of their corpses; they stumble upon their corpses:And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.THE THREAD
Therefore shall her young men fall in the streets, and all her men of war shall be cut off in that day, saith the LORD.Both verses use נפל (nāphal, “fall”) for Babylon’s dead. Jeremiah 50:30 places her young men falling in the streets; 51:4 widens the scene across the land and back into the streets.
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