What Does Isaiah 16:9 Mean?
Therefore I will weep with the weeping of Jazer for the vine of Sibmah. I will drench you with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh, for upon your summer fruit and your harvest the shout has fallen.
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 I will bewail with the weeping of Jazer the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for the shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy harvest is fallen.THE KEY
The tears become the water that reaches a vine whose harvest shout has fallen.
THE MEANING
The verse holds the reader inside the moment abundance collapses: the vine and named cities are soaked in tears while the cry over summer fruit and harvest has fallen. Sorrow reaches into the physical world of fruit, place, and provision.
THE ROOT
אֲרַוֶּךְ
ʾăravvekh
GROWS FROM
רוה
R-W-H
To be saturated or drink one’s fill; in causative forms, to saturate or water.
“drench” in this verse is ʾăravvekh. The verb holds watering together with being filled to satisfaction. Here tears saturate the vine and cities, giving grief the physical force of water.
ALSO GROWS
ravah: Be saturated; drink one’s fill.
רָוָה
This branch carries the sense of fullness and saturation inside the verse’s verb for watering.
hirvah: Saturate or water.
הִרְוָה
This causative form shows the speaker’s tears soaking the places named in the verse.
קְצִיר
qəṣîr
GROWS FROM
קצר
Q-TS-R
To reap or cut down; in another usage, to become short.
The Hebrew word for harvest comes from the verb for reaping: harvest is the act of cutting and gathering. The shout that has fallen belongs to the very moment when ripeness should become a gathered yield.
ALSO GROWS
qatsar: Reap; cut down.
קָצִר
This verb names the action contained in the word for harvest.
qotser: Reaper; one who gathers by reaping.
קֹצֵר
The harvest root points to the person carrying out the cutting and gathering.
qatsir: Harvest; the crop gathered by reaping.
קָצִיר
This is the noun used for the harvest whose shout has fallen.
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
ḥešbōn
GROWS FROM
חשב
Ḥ-SH-B
To think, devise, or reckon.
Heshbon’s name carries the language of reckoning and thought. The speaker’s tears reach the named city itself, bringing grief even to the place whose name holds that sense of reckoning.
ALSO GROWS
chashav: Think, devise, reckon.
חָשַׁב
This verb supplies the root sense carried by Heshbon’s name.
machashavah: Thought, plan, or design.
מַחֲשָׁבָה
This branch shows the root’s movement from reckoning toward what is thought or planned.
cheshbon: Reckoning, account, or calculation.
חֶשְׁבּוֹן
The city’s name echoes this word for reckoning.
THE PATTERN
Scripture gives grief physical reach through tears and weeping that fall upon lives and places touched by loss.
I am spent with my groaning; all the night I make my bed swim; I melt my couch with my tears.O vine of Sibmah, I will weep for you with the weeping of Jazer. Your tendrils crossed over the sea, and reached even to the sea of Jazer. The one who strips has fallen upon your summer fruit, and upon your grape-gathering.Jesus wept.THE THREAD
Those who sow in tears reap in a ringing cry.The harvest noun here, קְצִיר (qatsir), comes from קצר (qatsar), the root of “reap” in the psalm. The shared root places tears beside reaping in both verses, while Isaiah’s harvest shout has fallen and the psalm speaks of reaping in joy.
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