What Does Isaiah 26:17 Mean?
As a woman with child who draws near to bring forth writhes and cries out in her cords, so we have been before your face, LORD.
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
Like as a woman with child, that draweth near the time of her delivery, is in pain, and crieth out in her pangs; so have we been in thy sight, O LORD.THE KEY
The verse gives anguish the shape of labor at the threshold of birth, while leaving the birth itself unnamed.
THE MEANING
Your anguish can take the shape of labor: it tightens, hurts, and cries out in the LORD’s sight. The image holds the nearness of birth and the force of pain, yet the verse names the labor without naming its outcome.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that anguish places you outside the LORD’s sight meets its reversal here: this labor is explicitly in his sight.
THE ROOT
לָלֶדֶת
lāledet
GROWS FROM
י־ל־ד
y-l-d
To bear, beget, or bring forth.
“bring forth” in this verse is lāledet. English delivery can sound like a completed event; לָלֶדֶת means to bear or give birth, keeping the action inside the image. The people’s anguish takes the form of labor, but the verse leaves what comes forth unstated.
ALSO GROWS
yālad: to bear, give birth
יָלַד
The verb makes the woman’s experience an active process of bringing forth, not merely pain before an unrelated event.
yeled: child
יֶלֶד
The same root names the one who is born, joining labor and possible emergence in one word family.
mōledet: birth, nativity; kindred
מוֹלֶדֶת
Birth and kinship share this root family, so being brought forth also carries the sense of belonging.
חֲבָלֶיהָ
ḥăḇālêhā
GROWS FROM
ח־ב־ל
ḥ-b-l
Cord or binding; this word family also names labor pangs.
The Hebrew word for her pangs belongs to a word family that also names cords and ropes. That gives the pain a tightening, binding texture that the English word pangs does not show by itself.
ALSO GROWS
ḥevel: cord, rope
חֶבֶל
The cord sense makes the pangs feel like tightening and constriction rather than a vague ache.
ḥăḇālîm: pangs, especially birth pangs
חֲבָלִים
This is the word family used here for the woman’s labor pains, preserving the image of pain as something that grips.
תַּקְרִיב
taqriv
GROWS FROM
ק־ר־ב
q-r-b
To approach, come near, or bring close.
“draws near” in this verse is taqriv. The verb makes birth a threshold the woman approaches, not a vague period of suffering. The same root appears in קָרְבָּן (qorbān), meaning drawing near, so English separates a shared language of approach.
ALSO GROWS
qārav: to approach, come near
קָרַב
This verb supplies the movement in the verse: the time of birth is drawing near.
qorbān: drawing near; an offering brought near
קָרְבָּן
The related word keeps the root’s sense of coming near visible across another familiar Hebrew word.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses labor to picture intense distress gathered at the edge of bringing forth, while each passage names its outcome on its own terms.
Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to writhe and bear in one day? Shall a nation be born in a single stroke? For when Zion ached, she bore her children.For we know that the whole creation groans together and labors together in the pangs of birth until now.A woman, when she brings forth, has pain, because her hour has come. But when she has borne the child, she no longer remembers the pressure, for the joy that a human has been brought forth into the world.THE THREAD
Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall the earth be made to writhe and bear in one day? Shall a nation be born in a single stroke? For when Zion ached, she bore her children.The word for delivery in Isaiah 26:17 and the word born in Isaiah 66:8 share the Hebrew root י־ל־ד (y-l-d), meaning to bear or bring forth. Isaiah 26:17 leaves the emergence unstated; Isaiah 66:8 makes it explicit at the scale of a nation.
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