What Does Isaiah 10:30 Mean?
Cry out with your voice, daughter of Gallim; make it heard to Laish, O bowed Anathoth.
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
Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor Anathoth.THE KEY
The cry does not merely travel toward Laish: Laish is called to listen, making attention part of the warning.
THE MEANING
When distress presses into your world, it does not stay sealed inside one place: a cry rises from Gallim, and Laish is summoned to attend. Anathoth is named as afflicted, so the verse lets you hear both the alarm and the exposed condition it carries.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that distress must stay private to be real is undone here: the cry becomes audible beyond its source, and another place is summoned to hear.
THE ROOT
צַהֲלִי
ṣahălî
GROWS FROM
צהל
To cry aloud or shout, sometimes with rejoicing.
“cry out with your voice” in this verse is ṣahălî. This root names a cry breaking into the open; the setting gives the cry its emotional force. Here, paired with a call to listen, it becomes a signal moving from one place to another.
ALSO GROWS
ṣāhal: To cry aloud, shout, or rejoice.
צָהַל
Its range holds both the alarm of this verse and the rejoicing of other passages.
ṣahălî: Cry out; a feminine singular command.
צַהֲלִי
This is the command in the verse, and the same form calls Zion to shout in Isaiah 12:6.
הַקְשִׁיבִי
haqshivî
GROWS FROM
קשב
To listen closely, attend, or give heed.
“make it heard” in this verse is haqshivî. The command to Laish names an act of attention. Hearing is part of how the cry travels: one place calls, and another is summoned to attend.
ALSO GROWS
qāshav: To listen attentively or give heed.
קָשַׁב
This basic form shows listening as active attention, not merely sound reaching the ear.
maqshîv: One who listens attentively.
מַקְשִׁיב
This form brings the hearer into focus, as the verse does when it addresses Laish.
THE PATTERN
A cry gives distress a path into someone else’s hearing.
And in those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel groaned from the labor, and they cried out, and their outcry rose up to God from the labor.This bowed one cries out, and the LORD hears him, and brings him out of all his narrow places.When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, Son of David, have compassion on me.THE THREAD
Ring out and shout, you who settle in Zion, for great is the Set-Apart One of Israel within you.Isaiah 12:6 uses the same Hebrew צַהֲלִי (ṣahălî, “cry out”). Here the cry sounds amid threat; there it carries rejoicing, showing how the setting shapes what the shared cry expresses.
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