What Does Isaiah 66:11 Mean?
That you may suckle and be filled at the breasts of her comfort, and that you may drain and be delighted from the overflow of her weight.
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
That ye may suck, and be satisfied with the breasts of her consolations; that ye may milk out, and be delighted with the abundance of her glory.THE KEY
The verse makes consolation a mother’s nourishment, drawn in until need becomes delight.
THE MEANING
You are pictured receiving comfort as nourishment: you take it in, become satisfied, and delight in what is abundant. Jerusalem appears as a mother whose consolations reach the body. The movement runs from need to fullness within one image.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that consolation is only language offered from a distance: here, comfort is nourishment that enters, satisfies, and delights.
THE ROOT
תינקו
tinqû
GROWS FROM
ינק
y-n-q
To suck or nurse.
“suckle” in this verse is tinqû. The root makes consolation bodily: you nurse from it, taking it in until you are satisfied. Its branches also connect nursing with a tender shoot, joining nourishment with growth.
ALSO GROWS
yōnēq: Suckling; also a tender shoot.
יֹונֵק
The same word can describe a dependent child and a young shoot, linking nourishment with emergence and growth.
mēneqet: Nursing woman; nurse.
מֵינֶקֶת
The branch names the one who nurses, showing the word’s continuing relation of receiving and giving nourishment.
תנחומיה
tanchumeha
GROWS FROM
נחם
n-ḥ-m
To comfort or console.
“comfort” in this verse is tanchumeha. The word for consolation comes from a root used for the act of comforting and for being comforted. Set at a mother’s breast, it describes relief that can be received and taken in, not merely words spoken from afar.
ALSO GROWS
naḥamu: Comfort; console.
נַחֲמוּ
This form shows the root as an active giving of comfort, the same kind of care received here as nourishment.
menaḥem: Comforter; one who consoles.
מְנַחֵם
This branch names the one who brings consolation, while Isaiah 66:11 pictures consolation itself as the mother’s provision.
כבודה
kevodah
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; weight.
The word rendered glory carries the concrete sense of weight. Here, the abundance of Jerusalem’s weight is something you draw from and delight in, giving the image a felt fullness rather than a distant splendor.
ALSO GROWS
kāvēd: Heavy; weighty.
כָּבֵד
This adjective preserves the root’s physical sense of weight beneath the verse’s language of glory.
kāvōd: Weight; honor or glory.
כָּבוֹד
This noun carries the same root into the word for glory, so the verse’s abundance has the sense of something substantial.
THE PATTERN
Consolation is pictured as nourishment: received deeply, it quiets need and gives life room to grow.
Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she would not have compassion on the son of her womb? Even they may forget, but I will not forget you.Surely I level and hush my living soul, like a weaned child upon his mother; like one weaned upon me, my living soul.As newborn infants, long for the unmixed milk of the word, so that by it you may grow into deliverance.THE THREAD
You shall suckle on the milk of nations, and suckle at the breast of kings; and you shall know that I, the LORD, am your Deliverer and your redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.The Hebrew root ינק (y-n-q, to suck or nurse) appears in both verses: here, Zion nurses her children from her consolations; there, Zion herself draws milk from nations and kings. The image turns nourishment into shared abundance, with the one who feeds also being fed.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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