What Does Isaiah 23:16 Mean?
Take up the lyre, go around the city, you harlot who has been forgotten; strike the strings well, multiply the song, so that you may be remembered.
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
Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered.THE KEY
The verse makes remembrance an act of performance: the one called forgotten is told to turn herself into public music.
THE MEANING
The words speak to the ache of being forgotten now, then place it beside a sharp, public response: take up the harp, fill the city with song, become memorable. Remembrance here comes through repeated sound carried into the streets. The image stays uncomfortable: the forgotten woman is told to make herself a spectacle to be seen again.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It unsettles the belief that being forgotten is permanent: the verse imagines remembrance being re-entered through voice and repetition.
THE ROOT
תִּזָּכְרִי
tizzāḵrî
GROWS FROM
זכר
Remember, call to mind, mention.
“remembered” in this verse is tizzāḵrî. The Hebrew root joins remembering with bringing something to mind or mention. The songs are not background music: they make the forgotten one present in the city’s hearing.
ALSO GROWS
zēkher: Remembrance, mention.
זֵכֶר
This branch shows remembrance as something that can be spoken and brought into public attention.
zikkārôn: Memorial, remembrance.
זִכָּרוֹן
A memorial keeps someone or something present across time, echoing the verse’s effort to be remembered.
נִשְׁכָּחָה
nishkāḥāh
GROWS FROM
שכח
Forget, cease to remember.
The verse sets the state of being forgotten beside the act of becoming remembered, using two different Hebrew roots. Its repeated music answers erasure with sound, but the verse leaves the pressure of that performance intact.
ALSO GROWS
shākaḥ: To forget.
שָׁכַח
The source verb names the lapse in memory that the woman in the verse is trying to overcome.
nishkāḥ: Forgotten.
נִשְׁכָּח
This form describes someone as having fallen out of remembrance, the condition the verse places at its center.
THE PATTERN
Public remembrance is carried forward through repeated words and songs that keep a name or testimony present.
And it will come to pass, when many evils and narrow places find them, that this song will answer before their faces as a witness, for it will not be forgotten from the mouths of their seed; I perceive the shape they are making today, before I bring them into the land which I swore.I make your name remembered, generation upon generation. Therefore the peoples extend their hands to you for ages and ages.And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, Take, eat. This is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.THE THREAD
Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she would not have compassion on the son of her womb? Even they may forget, but I will not forget you.Both verses use שכח (shākaḥ), the root meaning “forget,” but place its pressure differently: here a forgotten woman is told to make herself heard; there even a mother’s forgetting is named before the words “I will not forget thee.” The shared root holds human erasure beside a remembrance that does not depend on performance.
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