What Does Isaiah 15:7 Mean?
Therefore the remainder they have made, and their stores, they carry away to the brook of the willows.
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
Therefore the abundance they have gotten, and that which they have laid up, shall they carry away to the brook of the willows.THE KEY
The surplus they gather becomes the very load they carry away.
THE MEANING
What is left over and laid up moves with its owners to the brook of the willows. Stored abundance becomes a carried load, showing that what has been gathered remains vulnerable to departure.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that laying something up makes it safe from loss. A store can become a load in motion.
THE ROOT
יִשָּׂאוּם
yissa'um
GROWS FROM
נשא
nasa
lift, carry, bear
“carry away” in this verse is yissa'um. The verb says lift, carry, bear; here the surplus is what gets lifted and borne away. Its branch מַשָּׂא (massa), meaning burden or load, reveals the weight hidden inside the English phrase abundance they have gotten.
ALSO GROWS
massa: burden, load
מַשָּׂא
This noun from the same root makes the carried abundance feel like a load, not simply a possession.
nose avon: bearing crookedness; idiomatically, forgiving
נֹשֵׂא עָוֹן
The same verb can describe bearing crookedness; here it describes the physical carrying away of stored goods.
יִתְרָה
yithrah
GROWS FROM
יתר
yatar
remain, be left over; exceed
“the remainder” in this verse is yithrah. Yithrah names what remains over: the residue or surplus. English makes abundance sound like fullness, while this root carries the sense of what is left over, and that remainder is now put in motion.
ALSO GROWS
yeter: remainder, surplus
יֶתֶר
This noun shares the sense of what remains after the needed portion, clarifying the verse’s abundance as surplus.
hotir: leave over, cause to remain
הוֹתִיר
This verb from the same root names the act of leaving something in excess, the very excess that is carried away here.
THE PATTERN
What is accumulated remains vulnerable to departure and cannot be secured by storage alone.
Will you make your eyes take flight upon what is not? For riches surely make wings for themselves, and they fly away like an eagle toward the heavens.As he comes from his mother's womb, naked he turns back to go as he comes. He lifts nothing from his toil that he can go away with in his hand.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.The verb borne here is נָשָׂא (nasa), meaning to lift or bear, the same root as carry in Isaiah 15:7. Here the root carries grief and sorrow; in the current verse it carries stored goods away, revealing the same verb’s range from bearing a burden to physical removal.
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