What Does Isaiah 17:6 Mean?
Yet gleanings shall be left in it, as the beating of an olive tree; two or three olives on the head of the highest branch, four or five on the outermost branches that bear fruit, says the LORD God of Israel.
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
Yet gleaning grapes shall be left in it, as the shaking of an olive tree, two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough, four or five in the outmost fruitful branches thereof, saith the LORD God of Israel.THE KEY
The verse counts what survives one berry at a time, yet calls the remaining branches fruitful.
THE MEANING
The image speaks of a tree shaken nearly bare: only a few berries remain on its upper branches. The remnant is small enough to count, yet it still holds fruit.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what survives a severe shaking is only loss: even a handful can remain, still belonging to a fruitful tree.
THE ROOT
וְנִשְׁאַר
ve-nish'ar
GROWS FROM
שאר
sha'ar
to remain, be left over
The word translated “left” grows from the same root used for “remnant.” What remains is not an unrelated scrap; it is the very thing the Hebrew names as what has endured. Here the remnant is visible as a few berries still clinging to the tree.
ALSO GROWS
she'ar: remainder, remnant
שְׁאָר
This noun from the same root names what is left after a larger whole has been reduced.
she'erit: remnant, what remains
שְׁאֵרִית
This is the same root in the language of a surviving remnant, linking the berries in this verse to a wider biblical image of what endures.
פֹּרִיָּה
poriyyah
GROWS FROM
פרה
parah
to bear fruit, be fruitful, multiply
“outermost branches that bear fruit” in this verse is poriyyah. The branches are called fruitful even as the verse measures their remaining berries in twos, threes, fours, and fives. The scarcity describes how much remains, while the root still carries the capacity to bear fruit.
ALSO GROWS
peri: fruit
פְּרִי
The few berries are named as fruit: what remains is still something living and produced by the tree.
parah: to bear fruit, be fruitful
פָּרָה
This verb carries the root’s generative sense, present in the description of branches that still bear.
THE PATTERN
When a whole is shaken nearly bare, life can remain as a small, countable remnant.
For thus it shall be in the midst of the earth, in the midst of the peoples, like the beating of an olive tree, like the gleanings when the vintage is finished.So also now, in this present season, there is a remnant left behind, picked out by favor.THE THREAD
And the remnant that has escaped of the house of Judah shall again take root downward, and bear fruit upward.Isaiah’s “left” and Kings’ “remnant” grow from the same שאר root, the language of what remains. Here only a few berries cling to the branches; there the remnant takes root and bears fruit, opening the possibility of renewed growth within what survives.
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