What Does Jeremiah 8:16 Mean in the King James?
The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan: the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones; for they are come, and have devoured the land, and all that is in it; the city, and those that dwell therein.
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 invasion reaches the land first as sound and trembling, then as a force that devours everything in its path.
THE MEANING
The horses’ sound is heard from Dan, and the whole land trembles as the force arrives. Its reach consumes the land, the city, and the people living there.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that danger begins only at impact: here its sound reaches the land before its consuming reach is fully seen.
THE ROOT
רָעֲשָׁה
ra'ashah
GROWS FROM
רעש
ra'ash
To quake or shake; the root also carries the sense of tumult or rumbling.
English separates the horses’ sound from the land’s trembling, but the Hebrew root of “trembled” also names tumult and rumbling. The land’s physical shaking belongs to the same disturbance the horses announce by sound.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ash: Earthquake, shaking, or tumult.
רַעַשׁ
The land’s trembling is not a quiet response; it is itself a tumult moving through the place.
hir'ish: To shake or cause to quake.
הִרְעִישׁ
This branch makes the root’s force active: the disturbance does not merely arrive near the land; it shakes it.
וַיֹּאכְלוּ
wayyokhelu
GROWS FROM
אכל
ʾakhal
To eat or consume.
“devoured” in this verse is wayyokhelu. The force is described as an eater: it consumes the land and everything in it, down to the city and its inhabitants. The same root can name food as well as eating, exposing the devastation as total consumption.
ALSO GROWS
ʾakhal: To eat or consume.
אָכַל
This is the action named in the verse: the invading force takes the land into itself as food.
ʾokhel: Food or something eaten.
אֹכֶל
The branch turns the image around: what the army devours becomes its food.
ma'akhal: Food, foodstuff, or something for eating.
מַאֲכָל
This branch reinforces the verse’s image of the whole inhabited place treated as consumable.
THE PATTERN
An approaching destructive force announces itself through sound that shakes its target before its full consuming reach is seen.
The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen; they shall go into thickets, and climb up upon the rocks: every city shall be forsaken, and not a man dwell therein.Like the noise of chariots on the tops of mountains shall they leap, like the noise of a flame of fire that devoureth the stubble, as a strong people set in battle array.And they had breastplates, as it were breastplates of iron; and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.THE THREAD
And they shall eat up thine harvest, and thy bread, which thy sons and thy daughters should eat: they shall eat up thy flocks and thine herds: they shall eat up thy vines and thy fig trees: they shall impoverish thy fenced cities, wherein thou trustedst, with the sword.The same root אכל (ʾakhal), “to eat or consume,” appears here as “eat up.” Jeremiah 5:17 unfolds what the root in this verse compresses: the invasion consumes harvest, food, herds, vines, and finally the cities themselves.
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