What Does Isaiah 38:10 Mean?
I said, In the stillness of my days I will go into the gates of the grave; I have been counted out of the remainder of my years.
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
I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years.THE KEY
The pain is not only death ahead; it is the sense of years left over that will never be lived.
THE MEANING
Here, the speaker sees himself approaching the gates of the grave while his years still feel unfinished. The grief holds two losses together: life ending, and the years he expected to have being taken from him.
THE ROOT
דְּמִי
demi
GROWS FROM
דמם
damam
To become silent or still; to cease.
The Hebrew phrase carries the sense of stillness or cessation in the speaker’s days; the KJV’s “cutting off” gives that silence the felt force of a severing. The verse thus holds the quieting of life together with the grief of reaching the grave before one’s years feel spent.
ALSO GROWS
demamah: Silence, stillness.
דְּמָמָה
In 1 Kings 19:12, this root describes the stillness in “a still small voice,” showing that the word can name a quieting, not only an ending.
dom: Be still; be silent.
דּוֹם
Psalm 37:7 uses this same root in “Rest in the LORD”; the shared word links the stillness at life’s boundary with stillness before the LORD.
יֶתֶר
yeter
GROWS FROM
יתר
yatar
To remain over, be left, or exceed.
The residue is what remains beyond what has already passed. Here, the years still left are not an abstraction: they are felt as a remainder the speaker will not reach.
ALSO GROWS
yitron: Gain, profit, or advantage.
יִתְרוֹן
Ecclesiastes uses this branch for what remains as gain from labor, making “the residue of my years” sound like an unspent remainder of a life.
motar: Surplus; what remains.
מוֹתָר
This branch makes the root’s sense of a remainder explicit, illuminating the speaker’s grief over years still left to him.
THE PATTERN
Awareness of life’s limit turns time into something measured and deeply felt.
Since his days are cut, and the number of his months is with you, you set his carved limits that he cannot pass over.LORD, make me perceive my edge, and the measure of my days, what it is, that I may perceive how I cease.A time to bear, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.THE THREAD
Hush before the LORD, and wait for him in labor. Do not burn yourself because of the one who pushes through on his way, because of the man who makes schemes.Isaiah’s “cutting off” and Psalm’s “Rest” draw on דמם (damam), the language of stillness and silence. The same root appears at the boundary of life and in stillness before the LORD, joining two experiences beneath one word.
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