What Does Isaiah 16:10 Mean?
And gladness will be gathered away, and joy from the fruitful field. In the vineyards there will be no singing, no shouting. The treaders will tread out no wine in the presses. I have made the shouting come to rest.
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
And gladness is taken away, and joy out of the plentiful field; and in the vineyards there shall be no singing, neither shall there be shouting: the treaders shall tread out no wine in their presses; I have made their vintage shouting to cease.THE KEY
The verse makes devastation audible: when the harvest is lost, the vineyard’s song and the winepress shout disappear with it.
THE MEANING
Here, joy is gathered out of the productive land: vineyard singing stops, and the winepress falls quiet. The loss reaches shared work and the voices that once marked the harvest, not only private feeling.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that joy can remain untouched while the conditions that sustain shared life are stripped away.
THE ROOT
נֶאֱסַף
ne'esaf
GROWS FROM
אסף
asaph
To gather, collect, or bring in; in this form, to be gathered away.
The verse says more than that gladness vanishes: it is gathered away from the fields. The same root names the ingathering of a harvest, making the loss feel like a harvest turned inside out: joy itself is what gets taken from the land.
ALSO GROWS
asif: Ingathering or harvest gathering.
אָסִיף
This branch names the work of bringing in the field’s produce, which makes the verse’s gathered-away gladness especially striking.
asuppah: An assembly or collection.
אֲסֻפָּה
The root can gather people as well as produce; here, the joy that might gather a community around the harvest is removed.
יְרֻנָּן
yerunnan
GROWS FROM
רנן
ranan
To ring out, sing aloud, or cry out with joy.
The Hebrew links joyful sound to the word for singing: the vineyard’s silence is the loss of joy made audible. A related form can even be translated “joy,” showing how the English separates what the root holds together.
ALSO GROWS
rinnah: A ringing cry or song of joy.
רִנָּה
This word from the same root appears as “joy” in Psalm 126:5, joining harvest directly to joyful sound.
renanah: Joyful singing or exultant cry.
רְנָנָה
This branch keeps the root’s sound and gladness together, illuminating what is absent when the vineyard no longer sings.
הִשְׁבַּתִּי
hishbatî
GROWS FROM
שבת
shavat
To stop or cease.
“come to rest” in this verse is hishbatî. The final line uses the root of stopping for the end of the harvest shout. The same root appears in words for Sabbath rest, but here the surrounding scene makes the stopping sound like loss.
ALSO GROWS
shabbat: Sabbath, a day of cessation and rest.
שַׁבָּת
It carries the same root of stopping, while Isaiah’s line shows that cessation can also name the silencing of a community’s harvest joy.
shabbaton: A Sabbath rest or period of cessation.
שַׁבָּתוֹן
This related form reinforces the root’s sense of stopping, which governs the verse’s final image of the shout brought to an end.
THE PATTERN
When devastation strips the land of its fruitfulness, the communal sounds of celebration fall silent with it.
The leaping of the tambourines rests, the roar of those who leap is stilled, the joy of the lyre rests.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.And the sound of those who pluck the harp, and of the makers of song, and of those who blow the pipe, and of those who sound the trumpet, shall be heard no more at all in you; and no hand of any craft shall be found in you any longer; and the sound of the grinding stone shall be heard no more at all in you;THE THREAD
Those who sow in tears reap in a ringing cry.The Hebrew noun רִנָּה (rinnah, a ringing cry or song of joy) in the psalm comes from רנן (ranan, to sing aloud or ring out), the root behind Isaiah’s missing vineyard singing. One verse gives the harvest without that sound; the other pictures tears giving way to a harvest accompanied by it.
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