What Does Isaiah 47:13 Mean?
You are worn out in the multitude of your counsels. Let them stand now, the binders of the heavens, the stargazers, the knowers of the new moons, and let them deliver you from what comes upon you.
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
Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save thee from these things that shall come upon thee.THE KEY
The verse measures every prediction by one question: can the seer deliver you from what they see coming?
THE MEANING
You can reach the point where advice has multiplied and still not be safer. Predictions may describe what approaches; they do not, by themselves, deliver you from it. The verse puts the stargazers under that same test: can their sight bring rescue from what is coming?
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that enough forecasts or expert advice can make the future controllable: seeing what is coming does not itself deliver you from it.
THE ROOT
וְיוֹשִׁיעֻךְ
wəyôšîʿūḵ
GROWS FROM
ישע
To deliver, bring out of danger, or bring into safety.
The word asks for more than a forecast: it asks whether the stargazers can deliver you from what is coming. The same root gives the noun for deliverance, so the verse sets prediction against the power to bring someone out.
ALSO GROWS
yāshaʿ: To deliver, bring out of danger.
יָשַׁע
This verb is the action the verse challenges the stargazers to perform.
yəšûʿāh: Deliverance, rescue.
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun names the outcome their counsel and star-reading are being asked to produce.
הַחֹזִים
haḥōzîm
GROWS FROM
חזה
To see, behold, or perceive a vision.
“stargazers” in this verse is haḥōzîm. The stargazer is named by the act of seeing. That family of words names sight and vision, while the first root names deliverance; the verse keeps those powers distinct.
ALSO GROWS
ḥōzeh: A seer, one who sees visions.
חֹזֶה
The singular form names a person by the very capacity the verse tests: seeing does not by itself rescue.
maḥăzeh: A vision or spectacle.
מַחֲזֶה
This related word shares the root consonants and shows what seeing can produce, a vision or scene, which is still different from deliverance.
THE PATTERN
Knowing what is coming and being able to deliver someone from it are distinct powers.
Daniel answered before the king and said, The hidden thing which the king has asked for cannot be shown to the king by the wise men, the astrologers, the magicians, or the soothsayers.A horse is a lie for deliverance, and by its great strength it cannot slip one free.Stay awake therefore, and pray in every season, so that you may be made strong enough to flee out from all these things that are about to come to be, and to stand before the Son of Man.THE THREAD
And Moses said to the people, Do not fear, take your stand, and see the deliverance of the LORD, which he will do for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again for the ages.Isaiah’s וְיוֹשִׁיעֻךְ (wəyôšîʿūḵ, “and let them deliver you”) and Exodus’s יְשׁוּעַת (yəšûʿat, “deliverance of”) share the root יָשַׁע (yāshaʿ, “deliver”). Exodus presents that deliverance as something shown “to day,” while Isaiah asks whether foreknowledge can produce rescue when danger arrives.
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