What Does Lamentations 5:18 Mean?
Because of the mountain of Zion, which lies emptied, the foxes walk upon 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
Because of the mountain of Zion, which is desolate, the foxes walk upon it.THE KEY
The foxes’ passage makes Zion’s desolation visible: the sacred height is now crossed by wild creatures.
THE MEANING
The reader meets desolation as a visible change in who occupies a place: foxes cross Zion’s mountain where human life has receded. Its sacredness does not shield it from being left exposed and empty. The word carries the shock of seeing a place become this.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a place’s sacredness guarantees its visible protection is undone here: Zion itself stands desolate, with foxes crossing it.
THE ROOT
שָׁמֵם
shamem
GROWS FROM
שׁמם
To become desolate; related forms also carry the sense of being appalled or stunned.
“emptied” in this verse is shamem. The Hebrew root holds physical devastation and the shock of beholding it close together. Here that ruin is made concrete: foxes cross the mountain that stands desolate.
ALSO GROWS
shemamah: Desolation, waste
שְׁמָמָה
This noun from the same root names desolation as a condition of the land, not merely a passing feeling.
shammah: Desolation, horror, astonishment
שַׁמָּה
This related form carries the shock that devastation can provoke, echoing the force of seeing Zion left to wild creatures.
THE PATTERN
When a dwelling is emptied, its changed inhabitants make desolation visible.
Thorns rise in its palaces, nettles and brambles in its fortresses. It becomes a dwelling for jackals, a courtyard for the ostriches.And he cried out with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great has fallen, has fallen, and has become the place where demons settle, and the holding place of every unclean breath, and the holding place of every unclean and hated bird.THE THREAD
And I will make Jerusalem heaps of stone, and a den of jackals, and I will make the cities of Judah a waste, with none settling in them.The word translated “desolate” in both passages comes from the Hebrew root שמם (shamem), meaning to become desolate. Jeremiah expands the image from foxes crossing Zion’s mountain to cities left without inhabitants.
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