What Does Isaiah 39:6 Mean?
Look, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and all that your fathers have stored until this day, will be carried to Babylon. Nothing will be left, says the 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
Behold, the days come, that all that is in thine house, and that which thy fathers have laid up in store until this day, shall be carried to Babylon: nothing shall be left, saith the LORD.THE KEY
The verse turns stored treasure into cargo: what is gathered and guarded can itself be carried away.
THE MEANING
A house can hold a lifetime of stored things and still cannot make them secure. What is laid up may be carried beyond its keeper’s reach until nothing remains. The verse lets the full loss stand in view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that what is securely stored is therefore secure is undone: the storehouse can be emptied, with nothing left behind.
THE ROOT
יִשָּׂא
yissāʾ
GROWS FROM
נשא
To lift, carry, or bear.
The verb gives the verse its force: the contents of a house are lifted out and borne away. This root can describe goods removed from reach or a burden carried on someone’s shoulders; the thing carried determines the weight of the action.
ALSO GROWS
nasi: Prince or leader; one raised up.
נָשִׂיא
The same root that carries the house’s contents away can describe someone lifted into prominence.
nasa avon: To bear crookedness or guilt.
נָשָׂא עָוֹן
Here the carried thing is an inward burden rather than stored goods, revealing how broadly this root holds the act of bearing.
אָצְרוּ
ʾāṣərû
GROWS FROM
אצר
To store up or gather as treasure.
“stored” in this verse is ʾāṣərû. The verb translated “laid up in store” belongs to the same root family as the word for treasure and treasury. What is valued and where it is kept share one seed, yet neither the treasure nor its storehouse guarantees that it will remain.
ALSO GROWS
otsar: Treasure or treasury; a storehouse.
אֹצָר
The noun joins the stored wealth to the place that holds it, sharpening the verse’s image of a house emptied of both.
otser: One who stores; a treasurer.
אֹצֵר
The root can name the keeper as well as the treasure, while the verse shows that keeping does not ensure possession.
יִוָּתֵר
yivvater
GROWS FROM
יתר
To remain, be left over, or exceed.
This root reaches from what remains beyond to what exceeds or is gained. The verse closes that possibility completely: there is no remainder, no surplus left in the house.
ALSO GROWS
yeter: Remainder or excess.
יֶתֶר
The verse’s “nothing shall be left” denies even the excess that this related word can name.
yitron: Gain, profit, or advantage.
יִתְרוֹן
The same root can describe what is gained; here the total loss leaves no gain or remainder to claim.
THE PATTERN
What is accumulated can leave human possession suddenly, exposing the difference between storing something and keeping it.
And he said, Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked I will turn back there. The LORD gave, and the LORD took; blessed be the name of the LORD.Will you make your eyes take flight upon what is not? For riches surely make wings for themselves, and they fly away like an eagle toward the heavens.But God said to him, Mindless one, this night your living soul will be demanded back from you. Then whose will those things be that you have made ready?THE THREAD
Surely he has borne our sicknesses, and carried our wounds. Yet we reckoned him struck, beaten by God, and bowed low.The Hebrew verb translated “carried” here shares the root נשא with “borne” in Isaiah 53:4. In one verse the house’s contents are carried away; in the other, griefs are borne, the same movement of carrying, with different things held in its grasp.
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