What Does Isaiah 13:16 Mean?
Their little ones also will be dashed before their eyes; their houses will be plundered, and their wives lain with.
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
Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.THE KEY
Conquest does not stop at the battlefield; it enters the home, kills children in their parents’ sight, and rapes wives.
THE MEANING
This verse names what violence does when it reaches a household: children are dashed to pieces before their parents, homes are plundered, and wives are raped. It refuses to make devastation an abstract tally; the harm is bodily, domestic, and witnessed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that violence stays on the battlefield: children, homes, and wives are direct targets.
THE ROOT
יְרֻטְּשׁוּ
yerutteshu
GROWS FROM
רטש
rṭš
to dash or shatter to pieces
This rare root returns in Isaiah 13:18 for young men, while Hosea uses it for a mother dashed upon her children. The repetition names bodies being shattered, not a vague defeat.
ALSO GROWS
ruttashah: was dashed to pieces
רֻטָּשָׁה
Hosea 10:14 uses the same root for a mother dashed upon her children, echoing the destruction of family life.
terattesh: you will dash to pieces
תְּרַטֵּשׁ
In 2 Kings 8:12, the same root describes children being dashed amid a broader assault on a people.
yirttashu: they will dash to pieces
יִרְטָּשׁוּ
Isaiah 13:18 repeats the root for young men, extending the verse’s violence beyond children.
תִּשָּׁכַבְנָה
tishakavnah
GROWS FROM
שכב
sh-k-b
to lie down; to lie with, including sexually
“lain with” in this verse is tishakavnah. The KJV renders the coercive act as “ravished,” while the Hebrew uses a verb from שכב, “lie down” or “lie with.” This root also forms the word for a bed, keeping the sexual violence connected to intimate bodily space.
ALSO GROWS
shakhav: to lie down; to lie with sexually
שָׁכַב
This verb’s sexual sense makes the violence named by “ravished” visible in the root itself.
mishkav: bed; place of lying
מִשְׁכָּב
The related noun connects the verb to the private space of lying down, now breached by violence.
בָּתֵּיהֶם
battehem
GROWS FROM
בית
bayit
house or dwelling; by extension, household or family line
Bayit can name a dwelling and, in compounds, the household or dynasty connected to it. The plunder of “their houses” therefore reaches beyond walls and possessions into family life.
ALSO GROWS
beit-av: father’s house or extended household
בֵּית־אָב
The same word can name a family unit, showing that a house holds people as well as shelter.
beit-David: house of David; David’s family or dynasty
בֵּית־דָּוִד
The word can extend from a building to a family line, deepening the force of the houses being plundered.
THE PATTERN
When power turns violently against a people, its violence enters households and reaches children, homes, and sexual safety.
You shall betroth a wife, and another man shall lie with her. You shall build a house, and you shall not settle in it. You shall plant a vineyard, and you shall not eat of it.And Hazael said, Why does my lord weep? And he answered, Because I perceive the evil you will do to the children of Israel. You will set their strongholds ablaze, slay their young men with the sword, dash their little ones, and split open their women heavy with child.Then Herod, when he perceived that he had been mocked by the wise men, burned with rage, and sent forth and killed all the children who were in Bethlehem and in all its borders, from two years old and under, according to the time he had carefully learned from the wise men.THE THREAD
Therefore a roar shall rise among your people, and all your fortresses shall be ravaged, as Shalman ravaged Beth-arbel in the day of battle; the mother was dashed in pieces upon her children.The verb translated “dashed to pieces” in both verses shares רטש (rṭš), “to dash or shatter.” Hosea places a mother and children in one image, opening Isaiah’s line as the shattering of a family bond as well as the children’s bodies.
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