What Does Isaiah 13:13 Mean?
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken loose from its place, in the heat of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of the burning of his anger.
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
Therefore I will shake the heavens, and the earth shall remove out of her place, in the wrath of the LORD of hosts, and in the day of his fierce anger.THE KEY
The earth’s “removal” is itself a quake: what seems fixed can be shaken out of its place.
THE MEANING
The verse presents a world whose apparent fixedness gives way: the heavens tremble and the earth is shaken from its place beneath the LORD of hosts’ wrath. This is no gentle rearrangement; divine anger appears as a force that dislodges the world’s order.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this breaks is that the world’s arrangements are permanently secure or beyond judgment.
THE ROOT
תִּרְעַשׁ
tir'ash
GROWS FROM
רעש
ra'ash
To quake, tremble, or roar.
“make the heavens tremble” in this verse is tir'ash. The Hebrew verb carries the sense of quaking beneath the KJV’s “remove”: the earth is displaced through a shaking. The verse links loss of place with the force of a quake.
ALSO GROWS
ra'ash: To quake, tremble, or roar.
רָעַשׁ
This verbal form makes clear that the earth’s removal is an upheaval, not a quiet change of position.
ra'ash: An earthquake, shaking, or commotion.
רַעַשׁ
This noun shows the same root can name the shaking itself, the force that unsettles what appeared stable.
עֶבְרָה
evrah
GROWS FROM
עבר
avar
To pass over or cross.
“heat” in this verse is evrah. The word for wrath carries the motion of passing over or crossing. In this verse, anger is not an abstract feeling: it is a force that crosses into the world’s order and shakes it.
ALSO GROWS
avar: To pass over or cross.
עָבַר
This verbal branch gives the wrath word a sense of force moving across a boundary.
ma'avar: A crossing or passage.
מַעֲבָר
This related noun keeps the root’s motion visible, echoing the verse’s image of the earth being moved from its place.
מִמְּקוֹמָהּ
mim-meqomah
GROWS FROM
קום
qum
To stand, rise, or be established.
The word for place is connected to the root for standing or rising. The earth is shaken from the very position where it stands, so the verse describes the loss of its footing as well as its location.
ALSO GROWS
qum: To stand or rise.
קוּם
This is the action hidden inside the idea of a place: a position where something stands.
maqom: A place or standing-place.
מָקוֹם
This noun makes the contrast precise: what had a place to stand is moved out of it.
THE PATTERN
Scripture depicts the LORD’s confrontation with settled order as a shaking that reaches land, foundations, and heaven.
Then the earth quakes and trembles; the foundations of the mountains tremble and quake, because he burns.For thus says the LORD of hosts. Yet once more, a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry ground.whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”THE THREAD
For thus says the LORD of hosts. Yet once more, a little while, and I will shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry ground.Isaiah’s “remove” and Haggai’s “shake” grow from the same root, רעש (ra’ash, quake or tremble). Haggai lets you hear the earth’s displacement in Isaiah as the outcome of that same shaking.
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