What Does Isaiah 15:6 Mean?
For the waters of Nimrim are emptied. For the hay dries, the grass runs out, and there is no green thing.
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
For the waters of Nimrim shall be desolate: for the hay is withered away, the grass faileth, there is no green thing.THE KEY
The Hebrew word behind “withered” shares its root with “dry land,” joining the loss of green to the ground left when water withdraws.
THE MEANING
The waters are desolate, the hay dries, the grass comes to its end, and no green remains. The verse speaks to the present moment when what sustains visible life is gone and even its smallest sign has disappeared.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the assurance that devastation always leaves some visible sign of life: here, there is no green thing.
THE ROOT
יָבֵשׁ
yāvēš
GROWS FROM
יבש
Be dry; wither.
“dries” in this verse is yāvēš. The root behind “withered” also names dry land, so the same word family links water’s withdrawal with the loss of green. Hebrew’s shared root lets the scene move from exposed ground to vegetation drying out.
ALSO GROWS
yabbāšāh: Dry land
יַבָּשָׁה
Genesis 1:9 uses this word for the ground that appears as the waters gather, connecting Isaiah’s withering to the same vocabulary of water and dryness.
hôvîš: To dry up; cause to wither
הוֹבִישׁ
This causative form makes the drying active: the root can describe both becoming dry and bringing something to that condition.
THE PATTERN
Visible flourishing depends on what sustains it; when water and nourishment fail, green life withers.
And he becomes like a tree planted by the channels of the waters, that gives its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither; whatever he does, he breaks through.The vine has withered, the fig tree wilts; pomegranate, date palm, and apple, all the trees of the field, have dried up; for the leaping has withered from the children of humankind.For the sun rises with its scorching heat, and dries the grass, and its flower falls, and the beauty of its shape perishes; so also the rich one withers in his goings.THE THREAD
And God said, "Let the waters beneath the heavens be pooled into one place, and let the dry land be seen." And it was so.The Hebrew root יבש (y-b-sh, “be dry”) behind “withered” also forms יַבָּשָׁה (yabbāšāh, “dry land”) in Genesis 1:9. There, dry ground appears as the waters gather; here, that same root reaches the grass as its green disappears.
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