What Does Lamentations 5:15 Mean?
The joy of our heart has stopped; our dance has been overturned into mourning.
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 joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning.THE KEY
The verse names grief as a full reversal: joy stops in the heart, and the shared dance takes the shape of mourning.
THE MEANING
The joy at the heart’s center has stopped, and shared movement carries grief. When familiar delight no longer moves as it did, this verse gives that loss exact language: dance itself is turned into mourning. The words meet the reader in the moment of that reversal.
THE ROOT
נֶהְפַּךְ
nehpakh
GROWS FROM
הפך
h-p-k
To turn, overturn, or transform.
“overturned” in this verse is nehpakh. The root carries the force of overturning as well as turning. The verse names a reversal that reaches beyond feeling: what is marked by dance now takes the form of mourning.
ALSO GROWS
Haphakh: הָפַךְ (haphakh): to turn or overturn
This is the verb family at the heart of the verse’s change from dance to mourning.
Mahpekhah: מַהְפֵּכָה (mahpekhah): overthrow, upheaval
This branch shows how the same root can describe a sweeping reversal, echoing the change in the heart’s and community’s rhythm.
Hithappekh: הִתְהַפֵּךְ (hithappekh): to turn oneself, turn around
This form keeps the sense of a state or direction turning over.
שָׁבַת
shavat
GROWS FROM
שבת
sh-b-t
To cease, stop, or desist.
“stopped” in this verse is shavat. The verb shares its root with the word for Sabbath, whose name carries the sense of cessation. Here, that same stopping names the painful silence of joy.
ALSO GROWS
Shabbat: שַׁבָּת (shabbat): Sabbath, a day of cessation or rest
The shared root lets the heart’s stopped joy echo the broader Hebrew idea of cessation.
Shabbaton: שַׁבָּתוֹן (shabbaton): a Sabbath rest, a complete rest
This related form carries the same root of stopping, illuminating the force of joy coming to a halt.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays joy and mourning as states whose direction can be reversed.
You overturned the beating of my breast into a dance. You untied my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together. I will overturn their mourning into gladness, and I will comfort them, and I will gladden them out of their sorrow.Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and wail, but the world will rejoice; you will be pained, but your pain will become joy.THE THREAD
You overturned the beating of my breast into a dance. You untied my sackcloth and girded me with gladness.Both verses use the same Hebrew root for “turned,” and both name dance alongside mourning. Lamentations turns dance into mourning; the Psalm turns mourning into dancing, making the two lines mirror reversals of one another.
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