What Does Isaiah 23:14 Mean?
Howl, you ships of Tarshish, for your stronghold is ravaged.
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
Howl, ye ships of Tarshish: for your strength is laid waste.THE KEY
The ships’ “strength” is a stronghold: when the shelter behind prosperity is devastated, even its carriers become voices of grief.
THE MEANING
The verse gives grief a voice through the ships: their carrying power is struck because the stronghold beneath it has been devastated. It speaks wherever what once seemed able to carry everything can no longer shelter what depends on it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that a powerful vessel or system can guarantee its own safety: even the stronghold can be devastated.
THE ROOT
הֵילִילוּ
hēlîlû
GROWS FROM
ילל
y-l-l
To howl or wail.
“Howl” in this verse is hēlîlû. English gives a dramatic command; the Hebrew root names the raw cry itself. The ships are pictured as mourners, so the collapse reaches even the instruments that carry prosperity.
ALSO GROWS
yelālāh: Wailing, howling.
יְלָלָה
This noun from the same root makes the ships’ cry a response to devastation, not just a figure of speech.
hēlîlû: Howl!
הֵילִילוּ
This plural command gives the ships a voice and makes their ruin audible.
מָעֻזְּכֶם
maʿuzzĕkhem
GROWS FROM
עזז
ʿ-z-z
To be strong or powerful.
Though English says “strength,” the word reaches toward מָעוֹז (maʿōz), a stronghold or refuge: it carries the sense of shelter behind power. The devastation reaches the support that made the ships’ strength seem secure.
ALSO GROWS
ʿōz: Strength, might.
עֹז
This branch names the power carried in the English word “strength.”
maʿōz: Stronghold, refuge.
מָעוֹז
This branch reveals the shelter or stronghold contained in the verse’s word for strength.
שֻׁדַּד
shuddad
GROWS FROM
שדד
sh-d-d
To devastate, despoil, or ravage.
This root names violent devastation, not simply a fading of strength. The verse presents the stronghold as ravaged, making the ships’ howl a response to a real collapse.
ALSO GROWS
shōd: Devastation, ruin, violence.
שֹׁד
This noun shows the force of the destruction that has overtaken the stronghold.
shōdēd: Destroyer, plunderer.
שׁוֹדֵד
This branch gives the root an agent of devastation, underscoring that the stronghold has been ravaged.
THE PATTERN
When a stronghold or power collapses, the people and vessels bound to it become the voice of its ruin.
Howl, for the day of the LORD is near; it will come as a ravaging from the Almighty.They will raise their voice over you, and cry out in bitterness, and cast up dust upon their heads, and roll themselves in the ashes.And they throw dust on their heads, and cry out, weeping and mourning, saying, Woe, woe, the great city, in which all who had ships on the sea grew rich by her costliness! For in one hour she has been emptied.THE THREAD
Howl, for the day of the LORD is near; it will come as a ravaging from the Almighty.Isaiah 13:6 uses the same Hebrew root ילל (yalal, to howl) behind “Howl” here. The shared command makes lament the audible sign of devastation, while each verse names a different collapse.
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