Bible Strands
Jeremiah 10:20
My tent is destroyed, and all its ropes are snapped. My sons have departed from me and are no more. I have no one left to pitch my tent or set up my curtains.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Jeremiah speaks as a prophet confronting impending national collapse, voicing a personal lament immediately after acknowledging his own grievous wound and before condemning the senseless shepherds who have scattered the flock.
The words — אָהֳלִ֣י ('o.ho.L/i) denotes the speaker’s tent, while מֵיתָרַ֖י (mei.ta.Ra/i) refers to the tent cords that secure it. The text states the tent is devastated and its cords snapped, leaving the speaker without structural support or shelter.
The thread — This imagery of ruined tents and lost children appears in Jeremiah 4:20 as instantaneous devastation, in Jeremiah 31:15 as Rachel weeping for her children, and in Isaiah 49:20 as children of bereavement requesting space. The motif tracks national mourning and displaced communities across prophetic literature.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of irreversible loss and the refusal to fabricate comfort where none exists. It requires the reader to sit with the reality of broken structures and departed people without retreating into evasion or false hope.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
My tabernacle is spoiled, and all my cords are broken: my children are gone forth of me, and they are not: there is none to stretch forth my tent any more, and to set up my curtains.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 4:20 Disaster after disaster is proclaimed, for the whole land is laid waste. My tents are destroyed in an instant, my curtains in a moment.
- Jeremiah 31:15 This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”
- Isaiah 49:20 Yet the children of your bereavement will say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; make room for us to live here.’
- Isaiah 54:2 “Enlarge the site of your tent, stretch out the curtains of your dwellings, do not hold back. Lengthen your ropes and drive your stakes in deep.
- Job 7:8 The eye that beholds me will no longer see me. You will look for me, but I will be no more.
- Proverbs 12:7 The wicked are overthrown and perish, but the house of the righteous will stand.
- Isaiah 51:16 I have put My words in your mouth, and covered you with the shadow of My hand, to establish the heavens, to found the earth, and to say to Zion, ‘You are My people.’”
- Lamentations 1:5 Her foes have become her masters; her enemies are at ease. For the LORD has brought her grief because of her many transgressions. Her children have gone away as captives before the enemy.
- Lamentations 2:4 He has bent His bow like an enemy; His right hand is positioned. Like a foe He has killed all who were pleasing to the eye; He has poured out His wrath like fire on the tent of the Daughter of Zion.