What Does Isaiah 6:11 Mean?
Then I said, Lord, how long? And he said, Until the cities are laid waste, without one who settles in them, and the houses without a human, and the ground left utterly emptied.
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 said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate,THE KEY
The answer to “How long?” is a condition of total vacancy, not a date.
THE MEANING
The question receives no calendar answer. The reply names devastation that reaches from empty cities, to empty houses, to a desolate land. The repeated absence stretches from public life to the household to the ground itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that asking “How long?” must bring a near or dateable answer; here the answer names the extent of devastation.
THE ROOT
שָׁאוּ
sha'u
GROWS FROM
שאה
sha'ah
To be devastated or laid waste; the root can also carry the sense of a crash or ruin.
“laid waste” in this verse is sha'u. The root appears in the description of both the cities and the land. The ruin reaches from the built place to the ground itself.
ALSO GROWS
sho'ah: Devastation, calamity
שׁוֹאָה
The same root names devastation as a condition as well as describing places laid waste.
tishsha'eh: Be laid waste, become desolate
תִּשָּׁאֶה
This form repeats the root for the land after the cities are called wasted.
שְׁמָמָה
shemamah
GROWS FROM
שמם
shamam
To be desolate or appalled.
“utterly emptied” in this verse is shemamah. The root joins an emptied place with the stunned response its devastation can leave behind. Here the land itself is named as desolation.
ALSO GROWS
shamem: Become desolate or appalled
שָׁמֵם
The verb holds both the ruin of a place and the appalled state associated with ruin.
shemamah: Desolation, wasteland
שְׁמָמָה
This noun gives the land’s condition a name: it is not merely unoccupied, but desolate.
אָדָם
adam
GROWS FROM
אדם
ʾ-d-m
A shared word family linking the human, adam, with the ground, adamah.
“human” in this verse is adam. The verse places “without man” beside “the land,” using words from the same consonant family. The absence of adam echoes in the desolation of adamah.
ALSO GROWS
adam: Human, person
אָדָם
The houses are described as having no human presence.
adamah: Ground, soil
אֲדָמָה
The verse extends the vacancy beyond dwellings to the ground itself.
THE PATTERN
Scripture measures a place’s ruin by the loss of habitation, from houses and cities down to the land.
And I will make your cities a dry waste, and I will empty your set-apart places, and I will not smell the restful fragrance of your sweetness.For thus says the LORD, the whole land will be emptied; yet I will not make it run out.Look, your house is left to you, empty.THE THREAD
For thus says the LORD, the whole land will be emptied; yet I will not make it run out.Jeremiah uses the same Hebrew noun, שְׁמָמָה (shemamah, desolation), for the land. It places a boundary beside that devastation: desolation and a full end are not the same thing.
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