What Does Isaiah 5:8 Mean?
Woe to those who reach house to house, who draw field to field, until there is no room, so that you may be settled alone in the midst of the earth!
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
Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!THE KEY
Possession can expand until it consumes the very space in which anyone, including its owner, can live.
THE MEANING
The verse names what happens when someone keeps extending their holdings across house and field: shared room disappears. The ending is stark, the person occupies the land’s center alone. The more space they claim, the less room remains for life beside them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that more ownership guarantees more security dissolves here: taking up every space ends in isolation.
THE ROOT
יַקְרִיבוּ
yaqrîvû
GROWS FROM
ק־ר־ב
q-r-b
To draw near, approach, or bring close.
“draw field” in this verse is yaqrîvû. The verb for bringing fields near shares its root with words for what is near and for a drawing-near offering. Here, the fields are drawn closer and closer until there is no room left.
ALSO GROWS
qarov: Near, close.
קָרוֹב
The fields are brought into increasing nearness, until their expansion leaves no space.
korban: A drawing-near offering.
קָרְבָּן
This branch shows the same root can name an offering brought near, a connection that opens the thread to Leviticus 1:2.
מַגִּיעֵי
maggiʿê
GROWS FROM
נ־ג־ע
n-g-ʿ
To touch, reach, or make contact.
“reach house to house” in this verse is maggiʿê. The first verb pictures houses made to touch, before the next verb draws fields near. The verse’s movement is physical and cumulative: one boundary meets the next until the space between holdings vanishes.
ALSO GROWS
magaʿ: Touch, contact.
מַגָּע
It makes the image of one house pressed against another concrete.
higgiʿa: Reach, arrive.
הִגִּיעַ
This branch carries the sense of extending until a boundary or destination is reached.
מָקוֹם
maqom
GROWS FROM
קוּם
q-w-m
To stand, rise, or be established.
“until there is no room” in this verse is maqom. The word for place belongs to the root for standing and rising, giving “no place” the feel of no standing room. The verse ends with both the land and the space to stand in it exhausted by the expansion.
ALSO GROWS
qam: Stood, rose.
קָם
The root’s basic image of standing sharpens what disappears when there is no place.
heqim: Raised, set up, established.
הֵקִים
This branch suggests the setting up of a place, the very possibility the verse says has run out.
THE PATTERN
When possession expands without limit, it turns shared space into exclusion and leaves the possessor isolated.
They covet fields and tear them away, and houses, and carry them off. So they press a man and his house, even a man and his inheritance.The land shall not be sold for good, for the land is mine; for you are sojourners and those who settle beside me.And he said to them, Watch, and guard yourselves against grasping, for a person's life does not lie in the overflow of what they hold.THE THREAD
Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, If anyone of you brings near a drawing near to the LORD, you shall bring near your drawing near from the cattle, from the herd and from the flock.Isaiah uses the root for bringing near as fields are drawn together until no space remains. Leviticus uses that same root for bringing an offering near to the LORD. The shared root makes the movement visible: what is brought near can fill up land, or be brought near as an offering.
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