What Does Jeremiah 51:52 Mean in the King James?
Wherefore, behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will do judgment upon her graven images: and through all her land the wounded shall groan.
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
The verse places carved gods under judgment while wounded voices fill their land, making the human cost of false power impossible to separate from the object.
THE MEANING
Carved images face reckoning while wounded people groan across the land. The scene keeps the human cost audible: the made thing stands silent beside the people it cannot shelter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that something fashioned into a sacred protector can guarantee the safety of the people around it; here, its judgment stands beside their wounds.
THE ROOT
פְּסִילֶיהָ
pəsîleyhā
GROWS FROM
פסל
pāsal
to carve or hew
“graven images” in this verse is pəsîleyhā. The word names something cut into shape by human hands. That concrete sense sharpens the scene: a made object faces judgment while wounded people fill the land.
ALSO GROWS
pāsal: to carve, hew
פָּסַל
This verb keeps the images visibly tied to their making, setting human craft beside the bodies that are wounded.
pesel: a carved image
פֶּסֶל
This noun names the object under judgment here and appears again in Habakkuk’s question about what a carved image can profit.
חֲלָלִים
ḥălālîm
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥālal
to pierce or wound; by extension, to slay
The word pictures people pierced or slain, not an abstract misfortune. The same written consonants also appear in a verb meaning “profane” or “make common,” an echo of desecration while this form specifically names the wounded.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāl: a pierced or slain person
חָלָל
This singular form makes the plural in the verse bodily and specific: people struck through.
ḥillēl: to profane, treat as common
חִלֵּל
The same consonants carry this other biblical sense, echoing desecration beside the image of wounded bodies.
יֶאֱנָחוּ
yeʾĕnāḥû
GROWS FROM
אנח
ʾānaḥ
to sigh or groan
“shall groan” in this verse is yeʾĕnāḥû. The pierced ones themselves groan; judgment does not remain an abstraction. Their sound makes the human suffering across the land present and audible.
ALSO GROWS
ʾānaḥ: to sigh, groan
אָנַח
This verb names the sound the wounded make in the verse.
ʾănāḥāh: a sigh, groaning
אֲנָחָה
The related noun gives that sound a name, keeping the passage focused on lived anguish.
THE PATTERN
What people shape into an object of trust cannot answer the suffering of those who depend on it.
They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.They that make a graven image are all of them vanity; and their delectable things shall not profit; and they are their own witnesses; they see not, nor know; that they may be ashamed.And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:THE THREAD
What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?Jeremiah’s פְּסִילֶיהָ (pəsîleyhā, “her carved images”) and Habakkuk’s פֶּסֶל (pesel, “graven image”) share פסל (pāsal, “carve or hew”). Habakkuk asks what profit a carved thing offers; Jeremiah sets that question beside the wounded voices filling its land.
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