What Does Isaiah 14:15 Mean?
But to the grave you will be brought down, to the flanks of the pit.
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
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.THE KEY
The voice that claims the highest place is carried toward the pit’s farthest recesses, reversing its own ascent.
THE MEANING
The verse turns the claim to the highest place into an arrival in the pit’s deepest reaches. The KJV’s “hell” renders שְׁאוֹל (She’ol, the realm of the dead), while בּוֹר (bor, pit) makes the endpoint a hollow below. תּוּרָד (tūrād, “you will be brought down”) describes a descent the speaker does not direct.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that reaching for the highest place makes you untouchable; the exalted one can still be brought down.
THE ROOT
תּוּרָד
tūrād
GROWS FROM
ירד
y-r-d
To descend or go down; in this form, to be brought down.
“brought down” in this verse is tūrād. The Hebrew form is passive: the speaker is acted upon and carried down. The root holds both descent itself and the force that brings someone down.
ALSO GROWS
vayered: Came down or descended.
וַיֵּרֶד
In Genesis 11:5, the same root describes the LORD coming down to see the tower builders’ heaven-reaching city; the root places the claimed ascent beside a descent.
horid: Brought or caused something to descend.
הוֹרִיד
This causative form makes explicit the agency carried by “brought down”: the root can name both descending and causing descent.
יַרְכְּתֵי
yarketei
GROWS FROM
ירך
y-r-kh
Thigh or flank; by extension, a side or remote part.
English “sides” can sound like the pit’s walls. The Hebrew points to its far recesses, placing the descent deep in the pit’s interior.
ALSO GROWS
yarekh: Thigh or flank.
יָרֵךְ
This concrete bodily word shows the root’s sense of a side or flank beneath the more spatial image of the pit’s recesses.
yarkah: A side or far part of a place.
יַרְכָּה
This form clarifies that the destination is not merely beside the pit but in its remote reaches.
THE PATTERN
A self-claimed ascent can end in a descent that strips away the height it claimed.
Swelling goes before breaking, and a breath lifted high goes before a stumbling.For everyone who lifts himself will be brought low; and the one who lowers himself will be lifted up.THE THREAD
And you, Capernaum, lifted high to the heavens, will be brought down to the unseen place.Luke makes the vertical reversal explicit: what is exalted to heaven is thrust down to hell. The image opens Isaiah’s line as a reversal of claimed height, carried out through descent.
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