What Does Isaiah 5:17 Mean?
Then the lambs shall graze in their own way, and sojourners shall eat in the ruins of the fattened ones.
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
Then shall the lambs feed after their manner, and the waste places of the fat ones shall strangers eat.THE KEY
The land outlasts its powerful owners: their abandoned abundance becomes pasture for lambs and food for sojourners.
THE MEANING
Lambs graze, and the ruined estates of the prosperous feed people dwelling there as outsiders. The land’s provision moves beyond its former owners, reaching those whose place there is not secured by inherited wealth.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that accumulated wealth can secure permanent possession: when its holders are gone, the land still feeds others.
THE ROOT
רָעוּ
ra'u
GROWS FROM
רעה
to tend, shepherd, or pasture; to feed a flock
“graze” in this verse is ra'u. The Hebrew root links feeding with shepherding and pasture, making the lambs’ grazing part of a larger pattern of tending. Here, abandoned holdings become grazing ground, and the land shifts from private possession to sustenance.
ALSO GROWS
ro'eh: shepherd; one who tends a flock
רֹעֶה
The same root names the keeper as well as the lambs’ feeding, linking pasture with care.
mir'eh: pasture; grazing ground
מִרְעֶה
This branch names the place where feeding happens, echoing how ruined land becomes provision.
גָּרִים
garim
GROWS FROM
גור
to sojourn or reside as an outsider
“sojourners” in this verse is garim. The word describes people by their outsider residence, rather than by wealth or ownership. The ruins of the prosperous become food for those dwelling there without inherited claim to the land.
ALSO GROWS
gur: to sojourn; to reside away from one’s kin
גּוּר
The verb carries the sense of dwelling as an outsider that remains inside the word for “strangers.”
ger: sojourner; resident alien
גֵּר
This related noun shows that the verse’s eaters are described as people living in a place without established ownership there.
THE PATTERN
The land’s abundance can pass beyond the wealthy holders who once controlled it and sustain those outside their ownership.
When you cut down your harvest in your field, and forget a sheaf in the field, you do not turn back to take hold of it. It is for the sojourner, for the fatherless, and for the widow, so that the LORD your God may bless you in all the making of your hands.He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.THE THREAD
I will feed them in a good pasture, and on the high mountains of Israel will be their fold. There they will lie down in a good fold, and in a fat pasture they will feed on the mountains of Israel.The Hebrew verb translated “feed” in both passages comes from רעה, the root that also gives the word for shepherd. Isaiah shows lambs feeding among abandoned holdings; Ezekiel uses the same root for a flock placed in good pasture, linking provision with tending.
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