What Does Isaiah 66:10 Mean?
Rejoice with Jerusalem, and leap with her, all who love her. Exult with her in gladness, all who mourn for her.
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
Rejoice ye with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love her: rejoice for joy with her, all ye that mourn for her:THE KEY
The people mourning for Jerusalem are called to rejoice with her, placing grief inside the circle of shared joy.
THE MEANING
Your grief for what is wounded does not place you outside its joy. Love, mourning, and rejoicing gather together around Jerusalem, whose name carries the promise of wholeness. Those who grieve for her rejoice with her.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that mourning puts you outside joy is undone: the mourners for Jerusalem are expressly included in her rejoicing.
THE ROOT
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
To be whole or complete; to bring to wholeness.
The name Jerusalem carries shalom, wholeness, and the verse gathers both her lovers and her mourners around her. Her joy is shared wholeness that can hold grief without erasing it.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being
שָׁלוֹם
This is the wholeness carried in Jerusalem’s name and the shared joy surrounding her.
shalem: Whole, complete
שָׁלֵם
It shows that the joy in this verse gathers people around wholeness, even while they mourn.
שִׂישׂוּ
sisu
GROWS FROM
שׂושׂ
To exult, rejoice.
“exult with her in gladness” in this verse is sisu. The verse pairs a command to rejoice with a noun from the same root: “rejoice with rejoicing.” The repeated root makes joy abundant and shared with Jerusalem, rather than merely an end to mourning.
ALSO GROWS
sisu: Rejoice, exult
שִׂישׂוּ
This is the call to share Jerusalem’s joy.
masos: Rejoicing, joy
מָשׂוֹשׂ
The same root turns rejoicing into the very substance of the joy shared with her.
THE PATTERN
Grief for what is loved can remain present within a shared movement toward rejoicing.
To set for those who mourn in Zion, to give them a headdress in place of ash, the oil of leaping for mourning, the garment of praise in place of a dimmed breath; that they might be called oaks of alignment, the planting of the LORD, that he might be adorned.Those who sow in tears reap in a ringing cry.Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and wail, but the world will rejoice; you will be pained, but your pain will become joy.THE THREAD
Ask for the wholeness of Jerusalem; those who love you are at ease.Psalm 122 places shalom, wholeness, beside Jerusalem’s name and echoes Isaiah’s words about those who love her. Here, both her lovers and her mourners are gathered into rejoicing around the wholeness her name carries.
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