Jeremiah 51:39

“I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the LORD.” — KJV

Why This Verse Matters

This is the clearest Hebrew signal for what the Targums call “the second death.” Two markers make it unmistakable:

H5769 olam + H8142 shenah — “perpetual sleep.” Throughout Scripture, death is called “sleep” (Dan 12:2 — “those who sleep in the dust shall awake”; 1 Thess 4:14 — “those who sleep in Jesus”). But sleepers WAKE — at the resurrection. This sleep is olam — age-lasting, perpetual. It does not end.

H6974 quts negated — “not wake.” The verb quts means to awake, to rouse from sleep. It is explicitly denied here. The dead in $sheol wake at the resurrection (Dan 12:2, Rev 20:13). This verse describes those who do NOT wake — for whom even the resurrection does not bring restoration. No quts. No waking. No return.

The Targum rendered this as the “second death” — because it IS a different kind of death: a death from which there is no resurrection. Ordinary death is temporary (sheol gives up its dead). This death is olam — permanent, final, without waking.

For the full chain — from these Hebrew markers through the Aramaic Targums to the Hebrew Revelation’s acher maveth (another kind of death) — see the Revelation 20:14 verse study and the Nature of Hell master study.