What Does Isaiah 21:15 Mean?
For from the face of the swords they fled, from the drawn-out sword, from the bent bow, and from the face of the weight of war.
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 they fled from the swords, from the drawn sword, and from the bent bow, and from the grievousness of war.THE KEY
The Hebrew says they flee not only blades and arrows but the weight of war, making violence a pressure that bears down as well as a weapon that strikes.
THE MEANING
When weapons are already drawn, the body moves away from their reach. This verse names that movement plainly: away from swords, an aimed bow, and the weight of war.
THE ROOT
כֹבֶד
kōved
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty; to carry weight.
The phrase translated “grievousness of war” is literally the weight of war: the threat presses as a burden alongside the blade and bow. This root also gives kavod, “weight,” so the verse holds violence as something that bears down as well as strikes.
ALSO GROWS
kāvēd: To be heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
This verb shares the root’s sense of heaviness, making the war’s pressure concrete.
kāvōd: Weight; also honor or glory.
כָּבוֹד
This familiar branch keeps the root’s sense of weight visible; here that weight is the burden of war.
נָדָדוּ
nādadū
GROWS FROM
נדד
To move away, wander, or flee.
“fled” in this verse is nādadū. The verse opens with movement away from danger: nādad marks people driven from their place. The same root can describe wandering, revealing flight and restless movement as one motion away from pressure.
ALSO GROWS
nədōd: To wander or take flight.
נְדֹד
Psalm 55:7 uses this form for wandering far away, giving the same movement a voice of longing for distance.
nədūdīm: Wanderings or restless roaming.
נְדוּדִים
This branch widens “fled” into unsettled movement away from what presses in.
דְּרוּכָה
derukhah
GROWS FROM
דרך
To tread or step; in this form, to bring under pressure or bend.
The word for the bent bow comes from a root of treading and pressure: this is a weapon already brought to readiness. The same root gives derekh, “way” or “path,” holding the ordinary act of stepping beside the force that readies the bow.
ALSO GROWS
dārakh: To tread or step.
דָּרַךְ
The bow’s bent state is expressed through a word-family of pressure and stepping.
déreḵ: Way or path.
דֶּרֶךְ
The same root links a path made by steps with the pressure that brings the bow into readiness.
THE PATTERN
When violence closes in, flight names movement away from force already in motion.
And he turned aside the wheels of their chariots, and they drove them heavily, and the Egyptians said, Let us flee from the face of Israel, for the LORD fights for them against the Egyptians.At the sound of horsemen and bowmen, the whole city flees. They go into the thickets and climb up the crags. Every city is left behind, and no one settles in it.Then let those in Judea flee to the mountains.THE THREAD
Look, I would flee far off, and lodge in the wilderness. Selah.Isaiah’s “fled” and the psalmist’s “wander far off” come from the same root, naming movement away from pressure. Isaiah’s weapons make visible what the psalm expresses as longing for distance.
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