What Does Isaiah 24:3 Mean?
The earth shall be emptied through and through, and plundered through and through, for the LORD has spoken this word.
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
The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled: for the LORD hath spoken this word.THE KEY
Each Hebrew devastation verb is doubled, first emptying, then plundering, so the verse presents the land’s undoing as complete and ties it to the LORD’s spoken word.
THE MEANING
The verse confronts you with a land emptied and plundered completely; the paired Hebrew constructions intensify each action, leaving no softened edge. Its final clause identifies the source: the LORD has spoken this word, and the ruin stands within that utterance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a spoken judgment can be merely rhetorical: the verse binds the land’s total emptying and plunder to the LORD’s spoken word.
THE ROOT
הִבּוֹק תִּבּוֹק
hibboq tibboq
GROWS FROM
בּקק
To empty out, make void.
“emptied through and through” in this verse is hibboq tibboq. The Hebrew pairs an infinitive absolute with a finite verb, intensifying the action: emphatically emptied. Related forms of this root gather around emptiness and desolation, so the sound-shape carries the condition the verse describes.
ALSO GROWS
boqeq: Empties, makes empty.
בּוֹקֵק
Isaiah 24:1 uses this form for the LORD’s act, making the emptying in this verse part of a continuing refrain.
buqah: Emptiness, desolation.
בּוּקָה
Nahum 2:10 piles this noun with another form from the same root, making devastation sound like emptiness repeated.
הִבּוֹז תִּבּוֹז
hibboz tibboz
GROWS FROM
בּזז
To plunder, strip away, take spoil.
“plundered through and through” in this verse is hibboz tibboz. The second verb names plunder: the stripping away of what remains after the emptying. Together, the two repeated verbs describe distinct wounds to the land, its contents emptied and its possessions looted, each stated emphatically.
ALSO GROWS
baz: Spoil, booty, plunder.
בַּז
This noun names what plundering leaves behind as spoil, making the verse’s second devastation concrete.
lavoz: To plunder, take spoil.
לָבֹז
Isaiah 10:6 uses this verbal form for taking spoil, showing that the same root describes the act of stripping away.
דִּבֶּר אֶת־הַדָּבָר
dibber et-hadavar
GROWS FROM
דבר
To speak, declare; as a noun, word or matter.
The verb dibber, ‘spoke,’ and the noun davar, ‘word’ or ‘matter,’ share one root. The clause places the LORD’s speaking beside the matter spoken, joining utterance and declared event without softening the devastation.
ALSO GROWS
dibber: Spoke, declared.
דִּבֶּר
The clause explicitly says the LORD spoke, making the verbal branch of the root audible.
davar: Word, matter, thing.
דָּבָר
The same clause calls the utterance a davar, allowing speech and declared matter to share one root.
THE PATTERN
The land’s apparent permanence cannot outlast the word that names its undoing, while the spoken word itself remains.
Behold, the LORD empties the earth and strips it bare, and crooks its face, and scatters those who settle in it.I see the earth, and there it is unshaped and emptied; I see the heavens, and they have no light.Heaven and earth pass by, but my words do not pass by.THE THREAD
Behold, the LORD empties the earth and strips it bare, and crooks its face, and scatters those who settle in it.The same root בּקק (baqaq), ‘empty,’ appears in 24:1 for what the LORD does to the earth; 24:3 repeats it as the emphatic pair הִבּוֹק תִּבּוֹק (hibboq tibboq), ‘utterly emptied.’ The earlier verse opens the image, and this repetition presses the emptying to completion.
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