What Does Isaiah 51:15 Mean?
But I am the LORD your God, who stirs the sea, and its waves roar. The LORD of hosts is his name.
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
But I am the LORD thy God, that divided the sea, whose waves roared: The LORD of hosts is his name.THE KEY
The sea can roar and still remain within the reach of the one named as your God.
THE MEANING
The verse places the roaring sea beside the words “I am the LORD thy God” without treating its noise as proof of God’s absence. “The LORD of hosts” names the one whose authority holds even the sea’s tumult.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Turbulence means God is absent or has lost control.
THE ROOT
רֹגַע
rōgaʿ
GROWS FROM
רגע
To stir or agitate; in causative forms, to quiet or give rest.
“stirs” in this verse is rōgaʿ. The Hebrew verb carries the sense of stirring the sea, adding motion to the image of its division. Its related forms can also describe quieting, so the root holds both the sea’s agitation and its rest.
ALSO GROWS
rōgaʿ: Stirring or agitating; the form used here for the sea.
רֹגַע
This form places God’s action alongside the waves’ roar: the sea’s motion remains within the verse’s picture of divine authority.
hirgîaʿ: To quiet or give rest.
הִרְגִּיעַ
This causative form shares the root’s connection to the sea’s stirring while naming the movement toward quiet.
וַיֶּהֱמוּ
vayehĕmû
GROWS FROM
המה
To murmur, roar, or make a tumultuous sound.
The verb gives the waves a living, unsettled sound. Its branches also describe the din of a multitude, linking the sea’s roar with the noise of many gathered voices.
ALSO GROWS
hāmôn: A multitude, din, or tumult.
הָמוֹן
The shared root lets the roar of the waves carry the sense of a great, noisy multitude.
hamiyyāh: Murmuring, roaring, or tumult.
הֲמִיָּה
This related noun keeps the sound of the waves within the same family of restless noise.
THE PATTERN
The sea can remain loud while still being bounded by divine authority.
You rule the surge of the sea; in the roar of its waves, you still them.And said, This far shall you come, but no further, and here shall your swelling waves be held?And waking, he rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Be silent. Be muzzled. And the wind wore itself out, and a great calm came.THE THREAD
Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day, and the statutes of the moon and the stars for light by night, who stirs the sea until its waves roar. The LORD of hosts is his name.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew verb, רֹגַע (rōgaʿ, to stir or agitate), for the sea and repeats the image of roaring waves beside “The LORD of hosts is his name.” The shared wording places the sea’s unrest within the same ordered world as the lights of day and night.
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