What Does Isaiah 10:25 Mean?
For yet a very little while, and the seething will run out, and the burning of my anger will be spent in their wearing out.
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
For yet a very little while, and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction.THE KEY
The verse gives indignation a short clock, then names destruction as the point where its heat ends.
THE MEANING
The verse tells you now that this indignation is bounded: it lasts a very little while, then ceases. It also names a severe endpoint, destruction, so the boundary does not make the anger gentle.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that this indignation is endless: the verse gives it a very little while and says it ceases.
THE ROOT
וְכָלָה
wə-kālāh
GROWS FROM
כלה
To be complete or finished, come to an end; in intensive forms, to bring something to an end or consume it.
“run out” in this verse is wə-kālāh. English “cease” can sound like a pause, but this root carries the sense of reaching completion. Its branches can describe consuming or complete destruction, giving the ending here a hard edge.
ALSO GROWS
kalah: To be complete, finish, or come to an end.
כָּלָה
This is the verb behind “cease”: the indignation reaches its end.
kilyon: Destruction or annihilation.
כִּלָּיוֹן
This related word shows how the root of completion can also name a devastating end.
אַפִּי
appî
GROWS FROM
אף
Nose or nostril; also anger and heat, pictured as flaring at the nostrils.
“the burning of my anger” in this verse is appî. The word for anger holds a bodily image inside it: heat at the nostrils. The verse names this force as ending at a specific, destructive outcome rather than leaving it as an abstract or endless state.
ALSO GROWS
af: Nose, nostril; also anger or heat.
אַף
This is the base word beneath “mine anger,” bringing the image of heat into the verse.
erekh appayim: Slow to flare; literally, long of nostrils.
אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם
This familiar phrase preserves the same nostril-and-heat image, showing how the language pictures anger as something that flares.
זַעַם
zaʿam
GROWS FROM
זעם
To be indignant or denounce; the noun names indignation.
“seething” in this verse is zaʿam. The Hebrew uses a distinct word for “indignation” before naming “anger” with אַף. The sentence holds these related forces together while giving them different words: the indignation ceases, and the anger is directed toward their destruction.
ALSO GROWS
zaʿam: To be indignant or denounce.
זָעַם
The verb form shows indignation as an active force, not just a feeling.
zaʿam: Indignation or denunciation.
זַעַם
This noun is the force the verse says will cease.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can name a measured span for distress without hiding its hard endpoint.
For the burning of his anger lasts a moment, and in his favor is life. Weeping may lodge in the evening, but a ringing cry of joy comes in the morning.For our light pressure, which is for a moment, works for us a heavy weight, the weight of the ages, overflowing measure upon measure.THE THREAD
For the burning of his anger lasts a moment, and in his favor is life. Weeping may lodge in the evening, but a ringing cry of joy comes in the morning.Isaiah’s “mine anger” and the psalm’s “his anger” use the Hebrew word אַף (af), meaning nostril and, by extension, anger or heat. The psalm calls that anger momentary, echoing Isaiah’s “very little while.”
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