What Does Jeremiah 6:5 Mean in the King James?
Arise, and let us go by night, and let us destroy her palaces.
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 for “destroy” also means “corrupt,” joining the plan to ruin the palaces with the condition of being ruined from within.
THE MEANING
You hear destruction become a shared, deliberate plan: they rise, choose the cover of night, and name the palaces as their target. The verse speaks plainly about violence, without softening what they intend to do.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This verse undoes the belief that violence is always a sudden eruption: here it is chosen together, timed for darkness, and directed at a specific target.
THE ROOT
וְנַשְׁחִיתָה
wenashchitah
GROWS FROM
שחת
to ruin, destroy, or corrupt
The verb rendered “destroy” grows from שחת, a root that also names corruption. The same seed connects an act of ruin with the state of being spoiled, so the verse’s planned attack carries an echo of something already corrupted.
ALSO GROWS
shachat: to destroy, ruin, or corrupt
שָׁחַת
This verb appears here as an intended act of ruin and elsewhere describes corruption itself.
mashchit: destroyer; one who brings ruin
מַשְׁחִית
This related form gives ruin an agent, showing how the root can describe both the act and the one carrying it out.
THE PATTERN
Destruction takes shape as intention: a plan forms, a target is named, and harm is set in motion.
Hide me from the secret counsel of the wicked; from the insurrection of the workers of iniquity:And the letters were sent by posts into all the king’s provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to cause to perish, all Jews, both young and old, little children and women, in one day, even upon the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, which is the month Adar, and to take the spoil of them for a prey.The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.THE THREAD
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.The Hebrew verb translated “corrupt” shares the שחת root with “destroy” in Jeremiah. The echo joins inner corruption and outward violence through the same seed.
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