What Does Isaiah 13:10 Mean?
For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will go dark as it comes out, and the moon will not make its light shine.
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 the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.THE KEY
The judgment here reaches every light that makes the sky readable: none remains to shine.
THE MEANING
The verse names judgment as a collapse of the visible order: stars, sun, and moon all fail to give their light. Even the sun’s going forth brings darkness, and the moon offers no lesser light as refuge. The familiar signs of the sky no longer orient the reader.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that the lights by which the world feels stable will always keep their place and function.
THE ROOT
אוֹר
ʾōr
GROWS FROM
א־ו־ר
Light, brightness, illumination.
“make its light shine” in this verse is ʾōr. The stars’ “their light” and the moon’s “her light” both contain this same root. The verse names their radiance as one shared kind of thing, then shows that light failing across the sky.
ALSO GROWS
māʾōr: Luminary, light bearer.
מָאוֹר
This word names the kind of heavenly body whose light no longer serves its familiar purpose.
hēʾîr: To illuminate, give light.
הֵאִיר
The stars and moon cease doing what this related verb describes: illuminating.
יָרֵחַ
yārēaḥ
GROWS FROM
י־ר־ח
Moon; the related form also names the month.
Hebrew uses related forms of this root for the moon and the month, binding the luminary to a recurring measure of time. When the moon’s light fails, the verse dims both the sky and a familiar marker of time.
ALSO GROWS
yārēaḥ: Moon.
יָרֵחַ
This is the luminary whose light fails in the verse.
yeraḥ: Month, a measure of time.
יֶרַח
The related word ties the moon to the cycles by which time is marked.
צֵאתוֹ
tseʾtō
GROWS FROM
י־צ־א
To go out, come forth, emerge.
“as it comes out” in this verse is tseʾtō. The sun is darkened at its very going forth. The root makes the failure arrive at the moment of emergence, when the sun would ordinarily begin to illuminate the day.
ALSO GROWS
yāṣāʾ: To go out, come forth.
יָצָא
This is the verb underlying the sun’s “going forth.”
môṣāʾ: A going out, an exit or point of departure.
מוֹצָא
This related form reinforces the sense of an outward movement whose expected light does not arrive.
THE PATTERN
When judgment overwhelms the world’s order, scripture pictures the celestial lights themselves failing.
Before them the earth trembles, the heavens quake, the sun and the moon go dark, and the stars gather in their brightness.Immediately after the pressure of those days, the sun is darkened, and the moon does not give its glow, and the stars fall from the heavens, and the strength of the heavens is shaken.And I see when he opens the sixth seal, and a great shaking comes, and the sun becomes black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon becomes as blood.THE THREAD
And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night, and he made the stars also.The word for light in both passages grows from the Hebrew root א־ו־ר (ʾ-w-r). Genesis names the lights’ ordering work; Isaiah shows that their light can fail, making the reversal of that order visible.
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