What Does Isaiah 15:1 Mean?
The burden of Moab. For in the night Ar of Moab is ravaged and silenced; for in the night Kir of Moab is ravaged and silenced.
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
The burden of Moab. Because in the night Ar of Moab is laid waste, and brought to silence; because in the night Kir of Moab is laid waste, and brought to silence;THE KEY
The doubled night and doubled silence compress the whole devastation into one movement: two cities are stripped and their public life stops.
THE MEANING
Ar and Kir are laid waste in the night, and Moab is brought to silence. The repeated phrasing holds the violence in view: devastation comes swiftly, and the cities’ life is cut off before morning. The verse speaks to the shock of a community losing its home and voice at once.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a place always has time to answer an approaching disaster; here, the devastation is complete in the night.
THE ROOT
שֻׁדַּד
shuddad
GROWS FROM
שדד
shadad
To devastate or despoil; to violently strip a place.
“is ravaged” in this verse is shuddad. English names the result, while the Hebrew root centers the act of stripping and devastation. Its branches name both the devastation and the devastator, so the ruin here belongs to active assault, not quiet abandonment.
ALSO GROWS
shod: Devastation, plunder.
שֹׁד
The same root names the ruin produced by the act of laying waste.
shoded: Devastator, plunderer.
שֹׁדֵד
The root also names the one who inflicts the devastation, keeping the violence of the verse in view.
THE PATTERN
Catastrophic reversal can arrive within a night or an hour, leaving witnesses to encounter the ruin already complete.
And it came to pass that night, that the messenger of the LORD went out and struck down in the camp of the Assyrians a hundred and eighty-five thousand. And when they rose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.Babylon has suddenly fallen and shattered. Howl for her; take balm for her wound, perhaps she will be healed.Standing far off for the fear of her scourging, saying, Woe, woe, the great city Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.THE THREAD
Ah, the day! For the day of the LORD draws near, and like a ravaging from the Almighty it will come.Joel’s “destruction” is שֹׁד (shod), “devastation,” from the same שדד (shadad), “devastate or despoil,” root as Isaiah’s שֻׁדַּד (shuddad), “laid waste.” The shared root connects Moab’s ruined cities with Joel’s naming of the devastation itself.
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