What Does Isaiah 42:15 Mean?
I will dry out the mountains and hills, and dry up all their grass. I will make the rivers into coastlands, and dry up the still pools.
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 will make waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs; and I will make the rivers islands, and I will dry up the pools.THE KEY
Two Hebrew roots for drying make the devastation one continuous act, stripping growth from the heights and water from the land’s channels and reserves.
THE MEANING
The force in this verse reaches every layer of a sustaining landscape: vegetation on the heights, rivers, and pools. The hills are laid waste, rivers are made into islands, and pools are dried, leaving the land without its growth or water.
THE ROOT
אֲחָרִיב
ʾăḥārîḇ
GROWS FROM
חרב
ḥ-r-b
To be dry or desolate; in this form, to lay waste or make dry.
“dry out the mountains and hills” in this verse is ʾăḥārîḇ. The verb rendered “make waste” already carries the sense of bringing something into a dry, desolate state. The verse then uses יבש (y-b-sh), another drying root, so its devastation unfolds through repeated drying language.
ALSO GROWS
ḥārēḇ: Dry, desolate
חָרֵב
This adjective names the condition the verb brings upon the mountains and hills.
ḥōreḇ: Dryness, drought
חֹרֶב
This noun extends the root’s image from desolation to the absence of water itself.
אוֹבִישׁ
ʾôḇîš
GROWS FROM
יבש
y-b-sh
To dry or wither.
“dry up all their grass” in this verse is ʾôḇîš. The same verb form appears with herbs and pools, applying one root to living growth and stored water. Its branch יַבָּשָׁה (yabbāšāh, “dry land”) resonates with the rivers becoming islands: the absence of water becomes exposed ground.
ALSO GROWS
yāvēš: To be dry or withered
יָבֵשׁ
This form makes visible the condition of the herbs when their water is gone.
yabbāšāh: Dry land
יַבָּשָׁה
This branch names the exposed ground that echoes the image of rivers made into islands.
THE PATTERN
The one who governs a landscape can withdraw water from both its flowing channels and its reserves.
Behold, he holds back the waters, and they dry up; he sends them out, and they turn the earth over.He turns rivers into a wilderness, and the outgoings of waters into a thirsting ground.The sixth messenger pours out his bowl upon the great river Euphrates, and its water is dried up, so that the way of the kings from the rising of the sun is made ready.THE THREAD
Who says to the depths, "Be dry," and I will dry up your rivers.Isaiah 44:27 pairs the same roots heard here: חרב (ḥ-r-b), “dry or lay waste,” and יבש (y-b-sh), “dry or wither.” The repeated pairing extends the image from mountains and pools to the deep and its rivers, joining barren land and emptied waters.
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