What Does Isaiah 24:1 Mean?
Behold, the LORD empties the earth and strips it bare, and crooks its face, and scatters those who settle in it.
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
Behold, the LORD maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.THE KEY
The earth is not only damaged here; it is emptied of its contents and unseated as a home.
THE MEANING
Here the LORD empties the earth, makes it waste, twists its face, and scatters those who dwell on it. Familiar ground and settled life undergo upheaval together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that secure ground and a settled life guarantee safety collapses here: neither the place beneath the reader nor the life arranged upon it is beyond upheaval.
THE ROOT
בּוֹקֵק
bōqēq
GROWS FROM
בקק
To empty out; to pour away.
“empties the earth” in this verse is bōqēq. The word translated “empty” comes from בקק (baqaq, to empty out), giving the ruin the force of a complete emptying. The Hebrew form בּוֹקֵק (bōqēq, emptying) presents the earth itself as what is being emptied.
ALSO GROWS
bāqaq: To empty or pour out.
בָּקַק
This verbal form names the act at the root of “maketh the earth empty.”
bōqēq: One who empties; the emptier.
בֹּקֵק
Nahum uses this form for the agent of emptying, showing that the same root names both the act and the one who carries it out.
יֹשְׁבֶיהָ
yōshĕveha
GROWS FROM
ישב
To sit, dwell, or remain.
“those who settle in it” in this verse is yōshĕveha. The “inhabitants” are those who sit or dwell in a place. When they are scattered, the verse describes more than movement: the settled relation between people and their home is broken.
ALSO GROWS
yāshav: To sit or dwell.
יָשַׁב
This root verb reveals the settled posture carried inside the word “inhabitants.”
yōshēv: One who sits or dwells; a resident.
יֹשֵׁב
This form names a person by the act of dwelling, so scattering undoes the very condition that defines the inhabitants.
THE PATTERN
The LORD’s upheaval reaches both the land people rely on and the settled arrangements built upon it.
I see, and there, the orchard is a wilderness, and all its cities are torn down from the face of the LORD, from the face of the burning of his anger.So the LORD scattered them from there across the face of all the earth; and they let go of building the city.whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”THE THREAD
For the LORD has turned back the swelling of Jacob, as the swelling of Israel, for the emptiers have emptied them out and ruined their vine branches.Nahum uses the same root, בקק (baqaq, to empty out), in “the emptiers have emptied them out.” Isaiah applies that emptying to the earth itself, making a people’s devastation and the ground’s devastation expressions of the same action.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us