What Does Isaiah 22:9 Mean?
You saw the breaches of the city of David, that they are many, and you gathered the waters of the lower pool.
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
Ye have seen also the breaches of the city of David, that they are many: and ye gathered together the waters of the lower pool.THE KEY
The city of the beloved is seen with many openings, yet its waters are gathered into reserve.
THE MEANING
You see the many breaches in the city of the beloved, and you gather the waters of the lower pool. The verse holds vulnerability and provision together: the openings are real, and the water is still gathered. What is exposed does not erase what sustains.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that visible damage means nothing remains to be preserved is undone here: the water is gathered while the breaches are plainly seen.
THE ROOT
בִּקְעֵי
biq'ei
GROWS FROM
בקע
To split or cleave open.
“breaches” in this verse is biq'ei. The word pictures many split places in the city, not one vague weakness. This root can describe an opening that makes a path, but here the opening is a vulnerability in the beloved city.
ALSO GROWS
biq'ah: An open valley or plain, associated with land split open.
בִּקְעָה
The same seed links a breach in a wall with an opening in the land.
baqa: To divide something by splitting it.
בָּקַע
The same verb describes the sea being divided in Psalm 78:13; the root names the opening, while the context shows what that opening makes possible.
וַתְּקַבְּצוּ
vatteqabbetsu
GROWS FROM
קבץ
To gather or collect.
The verb brings what is dispersed into one place. Here the gathered thing is water, but the same root can gather people, too: the action is collection, not merely storage.
ALSO GROWS
qibbetz: To collect or bring together.
קִבֵּץ
Isaiah 56:8 uses this root for gathering Israel’s outcasts, extending the same action from water to people.
niqbetzu: A gathered or assembled group.
נִקְבְּצוּ
This form shows the root’s result: what was spread out becomes gathered, as the waters do here.
דָּוִד
Dawid
GROWS FROM
דוד
Beloved; one dearly loved.
David’s name carries the sense of the beloved, so the city bears more than a geographical label. The verse holds the beloved and the visibly breached together, without pretending that what is loved must be unbroken.
ALSO GROWS
dōd: A beloved person or lover.
דּוֹד
Song of Songs 5:16 uses this word for the beloved, revealing the name’s language of affection.
Dawid: A personal name associated with the beloved.
דָּוִד
In “the city of David,” the name gives the damaged city a nature of belovedness.
THE PATTERN
A place’s capacity to live is linked to how its waters are gathered, directed, and allowed to flow.
There is a river, whose channels make glad the city of God, the set-apart dwellings of the Most High.This same Hezekiah also stopped up the upper outflow of the waters of Gihon, and straightened it down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah broke through in all his works.The one who leans his weight into me, as the writing has said, rivers of living waters will flow from his belly.THE THREAD
He split the sea and walked them through, and made the waters stand up like a mound.The word translated “breaches” comes from בָּקַע (baqa), “to split open,” the same root behind “divided” here. In Isaiah the split marks the city’s vulnerability; here the opening in the sea becomes a passage.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
You can read any verse this way in the app, keep it as a card, and send it on.
A Bible app where you send verses from your keyboard and in Messages, and every verse has a Deep Dive.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us