What Does Isaiah 26:1 Mean?
In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah. We have a strong city. God will set deliverance for walls and bulwarks.
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
In that day shall this song be sung in the land of Judah; We have a strong city; salvation will God appoint for walls and bulwarks.THE KEY
God makes deliverance itself the wall and rampart of the strong city.
THE MEANING
Your refuge is a strong city whose boundary is God’s deliverance, set around you as walls and ramparts. The song describes safety as a place you inhabit now, with room to live.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that safety depends entirely on defenses you build and control. This verse places the city’s boundary in God’s deliverance.
THE ROOT
יְשׁוּעָה
yeshuah
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
To deliver, bringing someone out of constriction into spaciousness.
The root carries a movement into room to live; יְשׁוּעָה (yeshuah, deliverance) is more than escape. Here that movement takes architectural form: God sets deliverance in place as the city’s enclosure.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: To deliver, bring out into spaciousness.
יָשַׁע
The verb names the movement that the city’s walls embody: being brought out of constriction.
moshia: Deliverer, one who brings out.
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This branch names the one who carries out the deliverance that becomes the city’s protection.
yeshuah: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
This is the verse’s word: deliverance is appointed as the wall itself.
עָז
ʿaz
GROWS FROM
עָזַז
ʿ-z-z
To be strong or mighty.
“strong” in this verse is ʿaz. Hebrew places the city’s own strength beside God’s appointed deliverance: one describes the city, the other becomes its defensive boundary. This root also branches into words for strength and stronghold, extending the verse’s image of protection.
ALSO GROWS
ʿoz: Strength, might.
עֹז
It names the strength carried by the city’s description.
maʿoz: Stronghold, refuge.
מָעוֹז
This branch brings strength into the image of a place of protection.
THE PATTERN
God’s deliverance becomes the lived protection around people facing danger.
The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my rock, in whom I shelter; my shield, and the horn of my deliverance, and my high place.For I, says the LORD, will be to her a wall of fire all around, and I will be the weight in the midst of her.Who brought us out of so great a death, and brings us out; in whom we hope that he will yet bring us out.THE THREAD
The LORD is my strength and song, and becomes my deliverance.Both verses pair a song with strength and use יְשׁוּעָה (yeshuah, deliverance). Isaiah pictures deliverance as a city’s walls; this psalm names it as the singer’s own.
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