What Does Isaiah 13:8 Mean?
And they will be startled; pangs and cords will take hold of them; they will writhe as a woman in labor; they will gape at one another; their faces will be as flames.
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
And they shall be afraid: pangs and sorrows shall take hold of them; they shall be in pain as a woman that travaileth: they shall be amazed one at another; their faces shall be as flames.THE KEY
The verse makes collective terror a labor pain that seizes bodies and burns across their faces.
THE MEANING
Terror overtakes people as a bodily force: pangs seize them, they writhe like a woman in labor, and their faces flare. Each turns toward another and sees the same shock made visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that terror stays private and invisible: here it grips the body and appears on every face.
THE ROOT
חֲבָלִים
ḥăḇālîm
GROWS FROM
חבל
ḥ-b-l
To bind; a cord or bond.
The word for “sorrows” also belongs to the word family of cords and binding. The verse gives anguish the feel of pressure closing around the body, then makes that pressure visible through the image of labor.
ALSO GROWS
ḥevel: A cord or rope.
חֶבֶל
This branch lets the pangs be heard as binding pressure, not only as sadness.
ḥāval: To bind or hold something as security.
חָבַל
Its binding sense sharpens the image of pangs taking hold of people.
ḥăḇālîm: Pangs or birth pains.
חֲבָלִים
This is the verse’s word for sorrows, joining the pain directly to the labor image.
וְנִבְהָלוּ
wenivhalu
GROWS FROM
בהל
b-h-l
To be alarmed, dismayed, or hurried into agitation.
“startled” in this verse is wenivhalu. The alarm here is more than a quiet feeling; the root can also carry the sense of being hurried or thrown into disarray. That agitation fits the verse’s rush from seized pangs to mutual staring and faces that flare.
ALSO GROWS
nivhal: Alarmed or thrown into dismay.
נִבְהַל
It keeps the fear in the body as an immediate disturbance.
behalah: A sudden rush of terror or panic.
בֶּהָלָה
This branch echoes the verse’s abrupt, overpowering fear.
THE PATTERN
When upheaval overwhelms people, scripture describes it as labor that seizes the body and makes distress visible.
As a woman with child who draws near to bring forth writhes and cries out in her cords, so we have been before your face, LORD.Ask now, and see whether a male gives birth? Why do I see every strong man with his hands upon his loins, like a woman in labor, and all faces have turned green?For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.THE THREAD
As a woman with child who draws near to bring forth writhes and cries out in her cords, so we have been before your face, LORD.Isaiah 26:17 repeats חֲבָלֶיהָ (ḥăḇāleyhā, her pangs) and תָּחִיל (tāḥîl, she writhes or labors): both passages describe distress through the body’s travail. The echo makes the labor image in Isaiah 13:8 part of a recurring language for pain taking hold.
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