What Does Isaiah 18:5 Mean?
For before the reaping, when the blossom is full and the bud is set, and the sour grape ripens in the flower, he will cut away the trembling shoots with pruning hooks, and take away the trailing branches.
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
For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.THE KEY
In Hebrew, even “harvest” is a cutting, and here another cut comes before the fruit can be gathered.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the moment when growth appears nearly ready: its shoots can still be cut before the fruit is gathered. Ripening is underway, yet the harvest has not arrived.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that visible ripening guarantees a harvest.
THE ROOT
קָצִיר
qatsir
GROWS FROM
קצר
qatsar
To reap; to cut short.
The Hebrew word for harvest grows from qatsar, “to reap” or “cut short”: the harvest already carries a cutting within it. Here the vine is cut before that harvest-cut can gather its fruit.
ALSO GROWS
qatsar: To reap or harvest.
קָצַר
The verb makes clear that harvest is an act of cutting and gathering.
qotser: One who reaps; a reaper.
קוֹצֵר
The reaper performs the cutting contained in the word for harvest.
qatsir: Harvest; the crop gathered by reaping.
קָצִיר
This is the word used here for the harvest that has not yet arrived.
וְכָרַת
ve-kharat
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
To cut; to sever.
The verb for cutting off the shoots is also used for cutting a covenant and for being cut off. It carries the force of decisive severance, fitting the verse’s repeated removal of the growing branches.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: To cut a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb used for severing branches can describe the binding act of making a covenant.
nikhrat: To be cut off.
נִכְרַת
This form names the state of removal that the verse’s cutting brings about.
THE PATTERN
As fruit approaches its threshold, the growth meets a decisive cut, whether pruning, harvesting, or removal.
Stretch out the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great.Every branch in me that bears no fruit, he lifts away. And every branch that bears, he cleanses it, that it may bear more fruit.But when the fruit is handed over, straightway he sends out the sickle, because the harvest is standing here.THE THREAD
The harvest has crossed over; the summer has run out; and we have not been brought out.Both verses use קָצִיר (qatsir, “harvest”), from qatsar, “to reap” or “cut short.” Isaiah shows branches cut before the harvest; Jeremiah names the harvest as past while deliverance is still absent, placing the same threshold on the far side of the cut.
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