What Does Lamentations 1:15 Mean?
The Lord casts down all my mighty ones in my midst. He calls an assembly against me to break my young men. The Lord treads the virgin daughter of Judah as in a winepress.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
The Lord hath trodden under foot all my mighty men in the midst of me: he hath called an assembly against me to crush my young men: the Lord hath trodden the virgin, the daughter of Judah, as in a winepress.THE KEY
The Lord is named as both the one who summons the assembly against Judah and the one who treads her like grapes.
THE MEANING
Devastation reaches every layer of a people: the mighty are trampled, the young are broken, and the daughter of Judah is pressed as grapes in a winepress. The Lord is named as the one doing the treading, and the verse leaves that violence stark and unexplained.
THE ROOT
דָּרַךְ
dārakh
GROWS FROM
ד־ר־ך
d-r-kh
to tread or step
“treads” in this verse is dārakh. The winepress verb shares its root with the Hebrew word for a way or path: a step and the course it makes grow from the same seed. Here, that treading is directed against Judah, giving the image the force of a path laid over a people.
ALSO GROWS
derekh: way, road, course
דֶּרֶךְ
The same root that describes treading also names the way one travels, joining an action to the path it makes.
midrakh: footstep, place trodden
מִדְרָךְ
This branch keeps the root’s sense of a surface marked by the force of a step.
לִשְׁבֹּר
lishbor
GROWS FROM
ש־ב־ר
sh-b-r
to break, shatter
“break” in this verse is lishbor. The Hebrew says the young men are to be broken. The same root carries the sense of ruin and even breakers of waves, giving the word a force of things coming apart under impact.
ALSO GROWS
shever: breaking, fracture, ruin
שֶׁבֶר
The noun makes explicit the ruin contained in the verb used for the young men.
mishbar: breaker, breaking wave
מִשְׁבָּר
A wave that breaks shares this root, carrying the image of a force that overwhelms and breaks apart.
מוֹעֵד
moʿēd
GROWS FROM
י־ע־ד
y-ʿ-d
to appoint, designate, set a meeting
The assembly is a moʿed, a meeting that is appointed. The word gives the gathering an organized, summoned quality: Judah faces a force assembled against her, not a chance crowd.
ALSO GROWS
moʿēd: appointed time, appointed meeting
מוֹעֵד
This is the word used for the assembly set against the speaker.
ʿēdāh: congregation, assembly
עֵדָה
This related word names a gathered community, showing how the root of appointment also reaches the people assembled.
THE PATTERN
Prophetic texts use the winepress to picture people gathered and crushed under judgment.
I have trodden the winepress alone, and none of the people was with me. For I will tread them in the burning of my anger, and trample them in my heat. Their blood will be spattered on my garments, and I will soil all my clothing.Stretch out the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great.And the messenger throws his sickle into the earth, and picks the vine of the earth, and throws it into the great winepress of the seething of God.THE THREAD
I have trodden the winepress alone, and none of the people was with me. For I will tread them in the burning of my anger, and trample them in my heat. Their blood will be spattered on my garments, and I will soil all my clothing.Both verses use דָּרַךְ (dārakh, to tread) for the Lord’s action in a winepress image. Isaiah makes the force bodily and explicit through trampling and blood, sharpening the violence Lamentations leaves exposed.
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