What Does Zephaniah 3:6 Mean?
I have cut off the nations; their corners stand emptied. I have dried up their streets, so that none crosses them. Their cities are cut off, so that there is no man, no one settled there.
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
I have cut off the nations: their towers are desolate; I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant.THE KEY
The Hebrew verb for “cut off” is also used for “cutting” a covenant, giving the verse’s destruction the force of a decisive severing.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks of judgment reaching a people’s shared world: towers stand desolate, streets lose all passage, and cities have no inhabitants. The devastation includes not only structures but the movement and settled presence that make a city a home.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that towers, roads, and cities can make a people untouchable.
THE ROOT
הִכְרַתִּי
hikrattî
GROWS FROM
כרת
k-r-t
to cut or sever
The same root appears in the Hebrew phrase for “cutting a covenant.” That shared image gives “cut off” the force of decisive severance; the empty towers and streets show what that severance leaves behind.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: literally, “cut a covenant”; idiomatically, make a covenant
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb used here for cutting off can describe the decisive act of making a covenant.
karet: excision or cutting off
כָּרֵת
This noun form keeps the root’s image of a person or thing being severed from a community.
הֶחֱרַבְתִּי
heḥeravtî
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
to become dry, ruined, or laid waste
“dried up their streets” in this verse is heḥeravtî. This root connects ruin with dryness. Here, the streets are laid waste so completely that they no longer carry passage through the city.
ALSO GROWS
ḥōrev: dryness or drought
חֹרֶב
The same root links the ruined streets with the image of a place drained of what sustains it.
ḥorbah: ruin or desolation
חָרְבָּה
This noun names the ruined condition that the verb describes in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Judgment empties a community by removing passage and habitation along with its structures.
Behold, the LORD empties the earth and strips it bare, and crooks its face, and scatters those who settle in it.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.And the sound of those who pluck the harp, and of the makers of song, and of those who blow the pipe, and of those who sound the trumpet, shall be heard no more at all in you; and no hand of any craft shall be found in you any longer; and the sound of the grinding stone shall be heard no more at all in you;THE THREAD
On that day the LORD cut a covenant with Abram, saying, To your seed I have given this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.“Cut off” translates כרת (karat), the same verb in the Hebrew phrase karat berit, literally “cut a covenant,” rendered here as “made a covenant.” The shared verb links severing and binding through the image of a decisive cut, while the verses describe distinct acts.
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