What Does Isaiah 15:2 Mean?
He climbs to Bajith and to Dibon, to the high places, to weep. Moab howls over Nebo and over Medeba. Every head of theirs is shaved bare, and every beard is shorn.
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
He is gone up to Bajith, and to Dibon, the high places, to weep: Moab shall howl over Nebo, and over Medeba: on all their heads shall be baldness, and every beard cut off.THE KEY
The Hebrew word for “beard” shares its root with “elder,” so the cut marks grief on a visible sign of age.
THE MEANING
When loss reaches a people, it can be heard in their cries and seen in their bodies. Here, the howl and the bared heads and cut beards make grief public, carried across a whole community. The verse leaves the devastation visible rather than turning it into an abstraction.
THE ROOT
זָקָן
zāqān
GROWS FROM
זקן
z-q-n
to grow old; to be aged
English treats “beard” as a body part, but Hebrew places it in the z-q-n word family with “elder” and “old age.” The verse locates grief on a visible feature whose word family also names age.
ALSO GROWS
zāqēn: elder; an aged person
זָקֵן
The same consonants that name the beard also name the elder, linking the cut beard to age made visible.
ziqnāh: old age
זִקְנָה
This branch extends the word family to aging itself, deepening the significance of grief marked on the face.
קָרְחָה
qorḥāh
GROWS FROM
קרח
q-r-ḥ
to be or become bald
“shaved bare” in this verse is qorḥāh. The Hebrew names the bare patch itself, from the verb “to become bald.” Beside the beard cut away, it gives grief two visible signs: what is clipped and what is left bare.
ALSO GROWS
qērēaḥ: a bald person
קֵרֵחַ
The same root names the person whose scalp is bare, making baldness a visible bodily condition.
qorḥāh: baldness; a bald patch
קָרְחָה
This noun names the exposed place left without hair, so the body itself carries a mark of mourning.
THE PATTERN
Communal grief becomes visible through bodily signs and shared lament.
For every head shall be shaved, and every beard shorn. On all hands shall be gashes, and upon every loin, sackcloth.Shave yourself bald, and shear your hair for your pampered children. Widen your baldness as the eagle, for they have been laid bare and led away from you.When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews weeping with her, he snorted in his breath and was stirred within himself.THE THREAD
For every head shall be shaved, and every beard shorn. On all hands shall be gashes, and upon every loin, sackcloth.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew word for “beard,” זָקָן (zāqān), from the root also found in “elder” and “old age.” The echo places Isaiah’s cut beard within a recurring language where communal loss is written onto the body.
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