What Does Isaiah 23:10 Mean?
Cross through your land like the river, O daughter of Tarshish; there is no more girdle.
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
Pass through thy land as a river, O daughter of Tarshish: there is no more strength.THE KEY
The command to cross the land becomes a flood image: movement spreads where the force of restraint is gone.
THE MEANING
The verse holds together a command to pass through the land and an image of a river moving without restraint. This is not orderly travel; the movement fills the space, and the loss of containment is part of the scene. The image speaks wherever what once held a boundary can no longer hold it.
THE ROOT
עִבְרִי
ʿivrî
GROWS FROM
עבר
ʿ-b-r
Cross over, pass across.
“Cross through” in this verse is ʿivrî. The Hebrew verb is a command to cross, and its root also carries the idea of passing from one side to another. Beside the river image, crossing becomes a movement that fills the land when nothing contains it.
ALSO GROWS
ʿēver: The other side; beyond.
עֵבֶר
The same root holds both the act of crossing and the far side reached by crossing.
maʿavār: A passage or crossing.
מַעֲבָר
This branch makes the land a route of passage, echoing the verse’s command to move across it.
ʿavērāh: A transgression; a crossing of a boundary.
עֲבֵרָה
Here the same root’s sense of crossing can extend to crossing a limit.
THE PATTERN
When restraint disappears, movement spreads like water across the boundaries that once contained it.
Now therefore, behold, the Lord brings up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria and all his weight. He comes up over all his channels, and goes over all his banks.The beginning of strife is the opening of waters, so let it go before contention is uncovered.And the serpent throws from his mouth water like a river after the woman, so that he might cause her to be swept away by the river.THE THREAD
And Abram crossed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. The Canaanite was then in the land.“Passed through” comes from the same עבר root as Isaiah’s command to “pass through.” In Genesis, a person crosses the land; in Isaiah, the river image makes that crossing feel uncontained.
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