What Does Jeremiah 52:16 Mean in the King James?
But Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard left certain of the poor of the land for vinedressers and for husbandmen.
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
Being left alive can be a form of control: the powerful keep the poor on the land because their hands can keep it productive.
THE MEANING
You see a hard distinction: being left on the land is not the same as being restored to it. The captain leaves the land’s poorest for vineyard and fieldwork, so their survival also serves the authority that controls their place. The verse holds that exploitation in view without calling it freedom.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that surviving proves someone has been restored or set free; the people remain because the authority over them has work for them.
THE ROOT
הִשְׁאִיר
hish’īr
GROWS FROM
שאר
sha’ar
Remain; be left over.
“left” in this verse is hish’īr. The verb means the captain causes them to remain; it does not simply describe them as fortunate survivors. The same root names a remnant, revealing the condition under which this remnant persists: serving the land’s production.
ALSO GROWS
she’erit: Remnant; what remains.
שְׁאֵרִית
This noun shares the root and makes the people left behind part of the verse’s deeper language of what remains after loss.
nish’ar: Remained; was left.
נִשְׁאַר
This form describes the state of remaining, while hish’īr in this verse places the choice to leave people in the captain’s hands.
דַּלַּת
dallat
GROWS FROM
דלל
dalal
Be low, weak, or brought low.
The word for the poor carries the sense of being low or diminished. The verse’s choice of these people for fieldwork joins their vulnerability to the labor demanded of them.
ALSO GROWS
dal: Poor; weak; lowly.
דַּל
This related word shows that poverty and weakness share the same lowly register as the people named here.
dallot: Lean; thin or reduced.
דַּלּוֹת
This related form extends the root’s sense of diminished substance, echoing the people’s reduced power in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Land’s productive life can continue under a new authority, with workers assigned to maintain it.
But Nebuzar-adan the captain of the guard left of the poor of the people, which had nothing, in the land of Judah, and gave them vineyards and fields at the same time.Then Joseph said unto the people, Behold, I have bought you this day and your land for Pharaoh: lo, here is seed for you, and ye shall sow the land.Hear another parable: There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:THE THREAD
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.Both passages use שאר (sha’ar), the root for what remains. Here the poor remain under an imposed labor arrangement; Isaiah describes a remnant that no longer leans on the one who struck it. The shared root opens a distinction between merely surviving and being released from the hand that controls you.
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