What Does Isaiah 26:15 Mean?
You have added to the nation, O LORD, you have added to the nation. You have become weighty; you have pushed it far to all the edges of the earth.
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
Thou hast increased the nation, O LORD, thou hast increased the nation: thou art glorified: thou hadst removed it far unto all the ends of the earth.THE KEY
The nation’s increase is not only numerical: it gives the LORD weight and carries the people’s reach to earth’s farthest edges.
THE MEANING
The LORD’s increase makes a people weighty and extends their reach to the farthest edges of the earth. Growth here appears in both scale and territory, not as a number alone.
THE ROOT
יָסַפְתָּ
yasaphta
GROWS FROM
יסף
yasaph
Add, increase, continue.
“added” in this verse is yasaphta. The repeated increase grows from יסף (yasaph), “add,” so the nation’s growth is pictured as continuing addition. The branch יוֹסֵף (yosef), “he adds,” also gives the name Joseph its same seed of ongoing increase.
ALSO GROWS
hosif: To add or increase.
הוֹסִיף
It shows that the verse’s increase belongs to a family of words about adding more.
tosefet: An addition or something added.
תּוֹסֶפֶת
It makes visible the root’s sense of increase as something added to what is already there.
נִכְבַּדְתָּ
nikbadta
GROWS FROM
כבד
kavad
Be heavy or weighty.
“become weighty” in this verse is nikbadta. The word translated “glorified” comes from the root for weight. The verse joins the nation’s increase with the LORD’s weight: the growing people make his honor felt in the world.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
It reveals the concrete sense beneath the verse’s language of glory.
kavod: Weight, honor, or glory.
כָּבוֹד
It holds the physical sense of weight together with the honor named in the verse.
רִחַקְתָּ
richakta
GROWS FROM
רחק
raḥaq
Be far or make distant.
“pushed it far” in this verse is richakta. The verb carries the sense of distance: making something far or pushing it outward. Paired with “all the ends of the earth,” it gives the increase a spatial force, the people’s reach extends to the farthest boundaries.
ALSO GROWS
rachoq: Far or distant.
רָחוֹק
It carries the distance contained in the verse’s phrase “removed it far.”
hirchiq: To put far away or make distant.
הִרְחִיק
It shows how the root can describe movement outward, illuminating the verse’s expansion to the earth’s edges.
THE PATTERN
When God increases a people, their reach expands beyond its former boundaries.
Widen the place of your tent, and let the curtains of your dwellings stretch out. Do not hold back; lengthen your cords, and grip your pegs.He treads from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth.And the word of God grew, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great crowd of the priests heard and responded by leaning their weight.THE THREAD
And she called his name Joseph, may he add, and said, The LORD shall add to me another son.The word “add” comes from יסף (yasaph), the same root as Isaiah’s repeated “increased.” The name יוֹסֵף (Yosef), “he adds,” carries that same root, linking the nation’s increase to addition that continues beyond what is already present.
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