What Does Jeremiah 9:1 Mean in the King James?
Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
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
In Hebrew, the word for “eye” also means “spring,” so the image of eyes becoming a fountain is already inside the language.
THE MEANING
When people are cut down within a community, grief fills the whole body: the head longs to become waters, and the eyes a spring of tears. The lament continues day and night, holding the violence of the slain in plain view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the deaths of one’s own people can be witnessed without being felt through the body.
THE ROOT
עֵינַי
ʿênay
GROWS FROM
עין
ʿayin
Eye; also a spring or fountain, a source of water.
The Hebrew word for eyes also names a spring. The verse’s image of eyes as a fountain of tears echoes a connection already present in the word itself.
ALSO GROWS
ʿayin: eye
עַיִן
This is the word in “mine eyes,” naming the place from which tears flow.
ʿayin: spring, fountain
עַיִן
The same word can name a water source, making the image of the eyes as a source feel native to Hebrew.
חַלְלֵי
ḥallēlê
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To pierce or wound; also to profane, to make common.
The word for the slain carries the sense of the pierced or wounded. Its root also holds the language of violation, so the verse names a people cut down and the desecration their deaths bring.
ALSO GROWS
ḥālāl: a pierced or slain person
חָלָל
This branch names the people for whom the lament rises.
ḥillēl: to profane, to treat as common
חִלֵּל
This branch reveals a related sense of violation alongside the physical wound.
וְאֶבְכֶּה
veʾevkeh
GROWS FROM
בכה
b-k-h
To weep, to lament.
“weep” in this verse is veʾevkeh. The root holds weeping as a sustained lament, not a passing feeling. Its appearance in Lamentations joins this verse’s day-and-night grief to another cry over a devastated people.
ALSO GROWS
bākāh: to weep
בָּכָה
The verb gives the lament its bodily action.
bekhî: weeping, lamentation
בְּכִי
The noun keeps the same root in the language of ongoing grief.
THE PATTERN
When a people are cut down, scripture lets grief become bodily and audible rather than a private abstraction.
Therefore thou shalt say this word unto them; Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease: for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous blow.Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease.And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it,THE THREAD
For these things I weep; mine eye, mine eye runneth down with water, because the comforter that should relieve my soul is far from me: my children are desolate, because the enemy prevailed.Jeremiah’s וְאֶבְכֶּה (veʾevkeh, “that I might weep”) and Lamentations’ “I weep” share בכה (b-k-h), “to weep.” The shared root joins this verse’s day-and-night tears to the lament over a people left desolate.
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