What Does Isaiah 17:13 Mean?
The nations shall crash like the roar of many waters; but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be pursued like chaff of the mountains before the breath, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.
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
The nations shall rush like the rushing of many waters: but God shall rebuke them, and they shall flee far off, and shall be chased as the chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirlwind.THE KEY
The nations sound like an ocean, yet the verse turns them into chaff and a rolling thing before the wind: noise is not weight.
THE MEANING
The noise pressing around you can surge like many waters, but its volume does not make it lasting. At God’s rebuke, it flees; what looked massive becomes chaff before the wind and a rolling thing before the storm.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that whatever arrives with overwhelming noise must also be immovable.
THE ROOT
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוח
r-w-ḥ
Breath; moving air, or wind.
Hebrew uses one word for breath and wind, where English gives them separate names. Here the same word for the breath moving through a living body names the wind before which the chaff scatters.
ALSO GROWS
ruach: Breath
רוּחַ
This sense is hidden when English renders the word only as wind.
ruach: Wind
רוּחַ
In this verse, the wind exposes how little the chaff can hold its place.
גַּלְגַּל
galgal
GROWS FROM
גלל
g-l-l
To roll or roll away.
The Hebrew image carries the sense of a wheel or rolling thing caught before the storm. The comparison makes the nations’ loss of control visible as motion, not merely departure.
ALSO GROWS
galal: To roll or roll away
גָּלַל
This verb reveals the movement held inside the image of the rolling thing.
galgal: Wheel; rolling thing
גַּלְגַּל
The verse pictures the storm driving something into motion with no power to resist.
יֶהֱמָיוּן
yehemayun
GROWS FROM
המה
h-m-h
To roar, murmur, or make a restless sound.
“rush” in this verse is yehemayun. The Hebrew verb depicts roaring, so the nations arrive as turbulent sound before they are shown as weightless chaff. Their noise is real, but it does not prove lasting strength.
ALSO GROWS
hamah: To roar or murmur
הָמָה
This verb gives the waters their noisy, surging force.
hamon: Tumult, multitude, or noisy crowd
הָמוֹן
The related word can name both a crowd and its din, echoing the nations’ overwhelming sound.
THE PATTERN
What is light and unrooted is carried off when the separating force arrives.
The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the breath blows away.They are like straw before the breath, and like chaff that a storm steals away.Whose winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean his threshing floor, and gather the wheat into the barn; but the chaff he will burn up with fire that cannot be put out.THE THREAD
The wicked are not so, but are like the chaff that the breath blows away.Both verses use מֹץ (mots, chaff) and רוּחַ (ruach, wind). Psalm 1:4 lets you see the same word-pair at work: wind carries off what cannot remain rooted.
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