What Does Jeremiah 6:2 Mean in the King James?
I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman.
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 word rendered “delicate” shares a root with “delight” and “delicacies,” so Zion’s softness is the ease of a cultivated life, not merely physical fragility.
THE MEANING
This verse lets you see Zion as a beautiful, delicate woman, a city pictured through a life shaped by ease. “Delicate” carries the sense of luxury and delight, while the threat gathering around Zion leaves that softness exposed. Beauty and comfort do not make a life invulnerable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Beauty and comfort cannot guarantee safety.
THE ROOT
עֲדִינָה
ʿadînāh
GROWS FROM
עדן
ʿ-d-n (ʿādan): to be soft or delicate, to live luxuriously, to take delight.
“Delicate” holds more than fragility: the root carries the softness of a life accustomed to pleasure. Zion is pictured as beautiful and cultivated, with that ease exposed to danger.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēden: Delight, pleasure; Eden.
עֵדֶן
The same consonants name delight itself, revealing the pleasure carried inside “delicate.”
maʿădannîm: Delicacies, dainties.
מַעֲדַנִּים
This form names refined pleasures and rich food, giving the word’s softness the texture of cultivated ease.
דָּמִיתִי
dāmîtî
GROWS FROM
דמה
d-m-h: to be like, resemble, compare, or liken.
“likened” in this verse is dāmîtî. This root moves between being like something and making a likeness. The comparison gives Zion a visible form the reader can hold, while leaving the city larger than the image.
ALSO GROWS
dāmâ: To be like, resemble.
דָּמָה
This form shows the state of resemblance that the verse’s comparison creates.
dimmâ: To compare, liken, imagine.
דִּמָּה
This form names the act of making a likeness, the same act that shapes Zion’s image here.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives a city a woman’s image so that its condition can be felt as a human life.
Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!THE THREAD
Come down, and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon, sit on the ground: there is no throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans: for thou shalt no more be called tender and delicate.Jeremiah’s “delicate” and Isaiah’s “delicate” share the Hebrew root עדן (ʿ-d-n), carrying the sense of softness and luxury. Isaiah shows the same quality being taken away, which makes the threat surrounding Zion’s image feel more immediate.
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