What Does Isaiah 19:6 Mean?
And they will turn the rivers far away; the channels of the fortress will be emptied and dried up, and the reeds and the flags will wither.
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 they shall turn the rivers far away; and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither.THE KEY
Withering begins upstream: the life-bearing rivers are turned away before the reeds can survive.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now in the image of a sustaining flow under collapse: the rivers are turned aside, their channels dwindle and dry, and the plants that depend on them wither. The loss moves from source to channel to visible growth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that withering begins at the surface: here the reeds are the last link in an upstream failure of flow.
THE ROOT
הֶאֶזְנִיחוּ
he'eznîḥû
GROWS FROM
זנח
Z-N-Ḥ
Reject or cast off; in this form, turn away or make foul.
“turn ... far away” in this verse is he'eznîḥû. The root can carry the sense of rejection beneath the KJV’s image of distance. The rivers are not simply low; their sustaining course is turned away, and the channels and reeds bear the consequences.
ALSO GROWS
zānaḥ: Reject or cast away.
זָנַח
Psalm 44:9 uses this root for being cast off, giving the rivers’ turning away a shade of rejection as well as distance.
he'eznîḥû: The causative form used for the rivers in this verse; the root’s range also includes making foul or causing to stink.
הֶאֱזְנִיחוּ
The action reaches the rivers themselves before the verse describes the dried channels and withering plants.
נְהָרוֹת
neharot
GROWS FROM
נהר
N-H-R
Flow or stream; the same consonants also carry the sense of shining or becoming radiant.
“rivers” in this verse is neharot. The Hebrew word for river shares its root with words for streaming and shining. English names the watercourse, while the root also carries its active movement; when that flow is cut off, the reeds lose what sustains them.
ALSO GROWS
nāhār: A river or stream.
נָהָר
Genesis 2:10 uses the same noun for the river that waters the garden.
wənāhart: Flow or stream toward something.
וְנָהַרְתְּ
Isaiah 60:5 uses this verb from the same root, making the movement within the word visible.
wənāhārû: Shone or became radiant.
וְנָהָרוּ
Psalm 34:5 uses the root for faces becoming radiant, revealing the root’s link between flowing and shining.
THE PATTERN
What grows depends on the flow that reaches it; when sustaining water is cut off, growth withers.
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was split and became four heads.And he becomes like a tree planted by the channels of the waters, that gives its fruit in its season; its leaf does not wither; whatever he does, he breaks through.And he points out to me a clean river of the waters of life, bright as crystal, flowing out from the throne of God and of the Lamb.THE THREAD
And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it was split and became four heads.The same Hebrew word, נהר (nahar), names the river in Genesis and the rivers in Isaiah. In Genesis the river reaches the garden and waters it; in Isaiah the rivers are turned away and the reeds wither, exposing how growth follows the movement of the water.
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