What Does Lamentations 2:16 Mean?
All your enemies gape their mouths against you. They whistle and grind their teeth. They say, We have swallowed her up. Surely this is the day we have waited for. We have found it, we have seen it.
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
All thine enemies have opened their mouth against thee: they hiss and gnash the teeth: they say, We have swallowed her up: certainly this is the day that we looked for; we have found, we have seen it.THE KEY
Their boast makes your destruction sound complete before the one they attack has spoken.
THE MEANING
You hear what it is like to be spoken of as already consumed: your enemies open their mouths, grind their teeth, and call your ruin the day they have waited for. Their words expose the cruelty of the claim; they do not turn that claim into fact.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this verse exposes is that someone else’s certainty about your destruction can make your destruction complete.
THE ROOT
בִּלָּעְנוּ
billaʿnu
GROWS FROM
בלע
To swallow, engulf, or devour.
“swallowed her up” in this verse is billaʿnu. The boast is not merely that the enemies have won: they speak as though the one they attack has disappeared inside their victory. The same root describes people being swallowed in Psalm 124 and death being swallowed in Isaiah 25, so the image can turn against the devourer.
ALSO GROWS
bālaʿ: To swallow or devour.
בָּלַע
In Psalm 124:3, the same root pictures enemies swallowing the speaker; it makes the threat in this verse part of a recurring image of being engulfed.
billāʿ: To swallow up.
בִּלַּע
In Isaiah 25:8, the same root is used of death being swallowed, turning the consuming image toward what seems most final.
THE PATTERN
Hostility claims the power to consume the vulnerable, but Scripture turns the image of swallowing against the threat itself.
Then they would swallow us living, when their burning anger flares against us.He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears from all faces, and he will remove the taunt of his people from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.THE THREAD
He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears from all faces, and he will remove the taunt of his people from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.Both verses use the Hebrew root בלע (bālaʿ, to swallow or devour). Here the enemies claim they have swallowed her; Isaiah uses the same image for death itself, so the consuming claim is not the only possible ending.
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