What Does Isaiah 5:13 Mean?
Therefore my people are led away, because they have not known. Their men of weight go hungry, and their crowd is parched with thirst.
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
Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.THE KEY
The word translated “knowledge” is דַּעַת (da’at, knowing by encounter), so the verse locates exile in a loss of living recognition.
THE MEANING
The verse names what is true now wherever knowing is absent: a people can be displaced, and neither rank nor numbers can feed or quench them. Displacement, hunger, and thirst stand together as real costs.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that status or sheer numbers make a people secure: the honored are hungry, and the multitude is still thirsty.
THE ROOT
דַּעַת
da'at
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
“not known” in this verse is da'at. דַּעַת (da’at, knowledge) comes from יָדַע (yada, to know or perceive); this is knowing through encounter, not simply possessing facts. The verse names a loss of living recognition as the cause of displacement and deprivation.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
יָדַע
The noun דַּעַת (da’at, knowledge) grows from this verb, so the lack described here is a loss of recognition, not merely a shortage of information.
yedi'ah: Knowledge, report, or awareness.
יְדִיעָה
This noun shares the root consonants ידע (y-d-ʿ), showing that knowing is a faculty that can be present or absent.
גָּלָה
galah
GROWS FROM
גלה
To uncover or lay bare; in this verse, to go into exile.
“led away” in this verse is galah. The verb גָּלָה (galah, to go into exile) shares its consonants with forms meaning to uncover or reveal. Displacement carries an echo of exposure: the people are removed from their place and left laid bare.
ALSO GROWS
galah: To be carried away from one’s place and enter exile.
גָּלָה
This is the verse’s verb for the people’s displacement.
gillah: To uncover, expose, or reveal.
גִּלָּה
This form shares all three consonants with the exile verb, placing displacement beside exposure.
כְּבוֹדוֹ
kevodo
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to carry honor or significance.
“men of weight” in this verse is kevodo. The Hebrew expression behind “honourable men” is built from כבד (k-b-d; kaved), the root of heaviness and weight. Those who carry the people’s standing are famished; social weight cannot fill an empty body.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
It shows the concrete sense beneath the word for honor: weight.
kavod: Weight, honor, or significance.
כָּבוֹד
This is the word-family behind the “honourable” ones, linking their standing to the idea of weight.
THE PATTERN
A people’s well-being depends on living reception of what comes from God; when that knowing is absent, the language of hunger and thirst names the loss.
And he bent you low, and made you hunger, and fed you with manna, which you had never perceived, nor had your fathers, so that he might make you perceive that humankind does not live by bread alone, but by every word that goes out from the mouth of the LORD does humankind live.Behold, the days come, declares the Lord GOD, that I will send a hunger into the land, not a hunger for bread, nor a thirst for waters, but a hunger to hear and respond to the words of the LORD.Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me shall never hunger, and the one who leans their full weight into me shall never thirst.THE THREAD
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge, and I will reject you, so that you shall be no priest to me. Since you have forgotten the instruction of your God, I will also forget your children.Hosea repeats the same root, יָדַע (yada, to know or perceive), placing a community’s collapse where living recognition is absent. Isaiah renders that rupture as exile and thirst; Hosea shows it as destruction.
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