What Does Isaiah 10:21 Mean?
The remnant will turn back, the remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God.
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
The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God.THE KEY
The Hebrew names both what remains and what it does: the remnant turns back toward the mighty God.
THE MEANING
What remains of you can still turn toward God. The verse holds loss and return together: what is left is not beyond the reach of the mighty God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that once something has been reduced, nothing meaningful can return.
THE ROOT
יָשׁוּב
yāshûv
GROWS FROM
שׁוּב
shuv
To turn back or return.
“turn back” in this verse is yāshûv. The word translated “return” carries the motion of turning back. The line says the remnant’s defining movement is a return toward God.
ALSO GROWS
teshuvah: A return or turning back.
תְּשׁוּבָה
It makes visible the turning already inside “shall return.”
hēshîv: To bring or restore someone or something.
הֵשִׁיב
This causative branch shows the root can describe a return brought about, not only a person’s own turning.
שְׁאָר
sheʾār
GROWS FROM
שאר
shaʾar
To remain or be left over.
The Hebrew repeats the word for remnant: “a remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob.” What remains is not incidental to the sentence; it is the subject of its return.
ALSO GROWS
sheʾērît: A remnant or surviving portion.
שְׁאֵרִית
The same root names what is left after loss, matching the verse’s focus on what remains.
nishʾar: Is left or remains.
נִשְׁאַר
This form emphasizes the state of being left over that the verse names as the starting point for return.
גִּבּוֹר
gibbôr
GROWS FROM
גבר
gāvar
To be strong or prevail.
“mighty God” in this verse is gibbôr. “Mighty” comes from a root of strength and prevailing. The returning remnant turns toward El Gibbor, the God named by that strength.
ALSO GROWS
gāvar: To be strong or prevail.
גָּבַר
This verb exposes the force carried by the title “mighty.”
gevûrāh: Strength or might.
גְּבוּרָה
This noun shares the root and makes the strength in “Mighty God” explicit.
THE PATTERN
What remains after devastation can still turn back toward God.
Unless the LORD of hosts had left us a few survivors, we would have been as Sodom, and we would have been like Gomorrah.Come, and let us turn back to the LORD, for he has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck, and he will bind us up.So also now, in this present season, there is a remnant left behind, picked out by favor.THE THREAD
Then the LORD said to Isaiah, Go out now to meet Ahaz, you and Shearjashub your son, at the end of the channel of the upper pool, on the raised road of the cloth treader's field.Shearjashub (שְׁאָר יָשׁוּב, sheʾār yāshûv) means “a remnant shall return”, the same words that Isaiah 10:21 opens into a sentence. The name holds the remnant’s return as its nature; here that return is directed to El Gibbor, “Mighty God.”
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