What Does Isaiah 43:20 Mean?
The beasts of the field will give me weight, the jackals and the ostriches, for I have set waters in the wilderness and rivers in the parched land, to water my people, my chosen.
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
The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen.THE KEY
The wild creatures honor God because the water that keeps them alive makes the giver’s weight visible.
THE MEANING
Life in the wilderness is not overlooked: the beasts, dragons, and owls receive water, and their survival gives weight to the giver. The verse speaks to you now from inside thirst: even a place that feels barren is not beyond provision. The chosen people drink from this same gift.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that barren places hold no life to sustain, or that only human voices can honor God.
THE ROOT
יְכַבְּדֻנִי
yekhabbeduni
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to treat as significant.
“give me weight” in this verse is yekhabbeduni. Here honor carries the sense of making God weighty: the creatures’ survival makes the giver’s weight visible. The root holds weight and esteem together, so the water itself becomes a witness to who gives it.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight or honor; what carries significance.
כָּבוֹד
The same root names God’s weight, joining the creatures’ honor to the weight revealed through provision.
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the concrete image inside “honour” visible: to honor is to recognize weight.
kibbed: To honor or give weight to.
כִּבֵּד
This verb shows honor as an act of recognizing another’s significance, the response the verse attributes even to wild creatures.
THE PATTERN
Living creation bears witness to its source through provision that reaches its need.
He sends the springs into the valleys, and they walk between the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys break their thirst.Then the limping one leaps like a hart, and the tongue of the mute rings out. For waters split open in the wilderness, and streams in the desert plain. The scorched ground becomes a pool, and the thirsty ground becomes springs of water. In the pasture for jackals, where they lie down, there is grass with reed and rush.Yet he did not leave himself without witness, doing good, giving you rain from heaven and seasons that bear fruit, filling your hearts with food and gladness.THE THREAD
Call upon me in the day of the narrow place, and I draw you out, and you give me weight.“Glorify” here comes from כבד (k-b-d), the root behind Isaiah’s “honour,” and carries the same sense of giving weight. Isaiah shows wild creatures reflecting that weight through water received; the psalm shows a delivered person voicing the same response.
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