What Does Lamentations 5:16 Mean in the King James?
The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!
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 fallen crown becomes a confession: the community’s visible loss carries the shape of its shared missing.
THE MEANING
The crown has fallen from the shared head, and the verse names why: we have missed. Grief and recognition meet in the reader’s present, the loss is visible, and the rupture has a name.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that rupture is always private: here, the whole “we” names both the fallen crown and the shared missing.
THE ROOT
חָטָאנוּ
chata'nu
GROWS FROM
חטא
chata'
To miss or miss the mark; by extension, to do wrong.
The English “sinned” can sound like a fixed moral category; the Hebrew verb grows from a root that also means to miss. The lament makes its confession concrete: it names the community’s rupture through the image of a missed mark.
ALSO GROWS
chet: Missing; sin.
חֵטְא
This noun keeps the image of missing inside the word translated “sin.”
chote: One who misses; a sinner.
חוֹטֵא
The person-word grows from the same root, linking the person to the act of missing.
chatta't: Missing or sin; also an offering for sin.
חַטָּאת
The same root names the rupture and an offering associated with addressing it.
עֲטֶרֶת
ateret
GROWS FROM
עטר
atar
To encircle or surround; to crown.
English “crown” points to an object resting on top; the Hebrew root also carries the sense of encircling. What has fallen is the sign of honor around the head, so the image holds a loss that once encompassed the people.
ALSO GROWS
atarah: Crown; wreath.
עֲטָרָה
This noun shares the root and names the encircling sign of honor that has fallen.
he'ṭir: To crown or encircle.
הֶעְטִיר
The verb makes the root’s action visible: to surround with a crown.
רֹאשֵׁנוּ
roshenu
GROWS FROM
ראש
rosh
Head, top, chief, or beginning.
The word for “head” can also name what is foremost or beginning. The crown’s fall touches the community’s place of primacy and direction, not merely its decoration.
ALSO GROWS
reshit: Beginning; first part.
רֵאשִׁית
This related form brings the sense of beginning into the image of the head.
rishon: First; foremost.
רִאשׁוֹן
This related form carries the head’s sense of rank or being foremost.
THE PATTERN
Scripture’s language of missing can move from a missed target to a shared moral rupture.
Among all this people there were seven hundred chosen men lefthanded; every one could sling stones at an hair breadth, and not miss.Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;THE THREAD
Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.The word חַטָּאת (chatta’t, “missing” or “sin”) in Proverbs grows from the same root as חָטָאנוּ (chata’nu, “we have missed”) here. Proverbs names that missing as a reproach to a people, linking Lamentations’ fallen crown with a wider scriptural pattern of communal rupture.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us