to be devastated and empty: of places laid waste and of persons struck silent with horror
At the center of this word is the state of being stripped bare and emptied of life. When applied to land or a city, shamem names the condition of being reduced to ruin: uninhabited, stripped, left behind by its people. When applied to a person, the same word names the state of being so overwhelmed by what one has seen that one is struck dumb with horror, left standing in stunned silence.
The two senses are not separate roots but the same experience from two angles. A person who witnesses absolute devastation becomes, themselves, momentarily desolate. The verb describes both the ruined landscape and the frozen onlooker staring at it. Lamentations and Ezekiel use both applications within the same passage without transition, as if the connection needed no explanation.
A stronger form of the verb intensifies the psychological side: a person does not merely observe the horror from outside but is overcome inwardly by it, left stunned and speechless. This is the form Ezra uses when he tears his garment and sits motionless for hours upon learning of the marriages (Ezra 9:3-4), and the form the prophet uses when no one steps forward and he himself is left appalled (Isaiah 59:16).