What Does Isaiah 1:19 Mean in the King James?
If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
Willingness ripens into responsive hearing, and the land’s good becomes nourishment you can eat.
THE MEANING
When your willingness becomes hearing that responds, you eat the good of the land. The promise reaches into the present as tangible nourishment: the good around you is received and becomes sustenance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that hearing and response have no bearing on lived provision is undone by the verse’s direct link between them and eating the land’s good.
THE ROOT
וּשְׁמַעְתֶּם
u-shema'tem
GROWS FROM
שמע
shama
Hear or listen, with response carried by the context.
The word rendered “obedient” is built on hearing: the verse presents response as part of listening. The same root gives both what is heard and the practice of obedience, folding reception and response together.
ALSO GROWS
shemu'ah: A report or something heard
שְׁמוּעָה
It shows hearing as reception of something that can then call for a response.
mishma'at: Obedience or discipline
מִשְׁמַעַת
It makes the hearing-to-response link explicit in a word for obedience.
תֹּאכֵלוּ
tokhelu
GROWS FROM
אכל
akhal
Eat or consume.
“eat” in this verse is tokhelu. The promise is expressed as eating: the land’s טוב (tov, good) becomes nourishment taken in. Its good is experienced as sustenance, not left as an abstraction.
ALSO GROWS
okhel: Food
אֹכֶל
The noun for food grows from the same root as the act of eating, bringing the verse’s promise close to nourishment.
ma'akhal: Food or foodstuff
מַאֲכָל
This branch likewise names what can be eaten, echoing the verse’s tangible promise.
טוּב
tuv
GROWS FROM
טוב
tov
Goodness or benefit.
The verse names the land’s טוב (tov, good) as something edible. Goodness becomes tangible yield and nourishment in the same phrase.
ALSO GROWS
tovah: Goodness or benefit
טוֹבָה
It carries the root’s sense of what is beneficial, the quality of the land’s good.
heitiv: To do good or make good
הֵיטִיב
This verb shows the root’s goodness as something that can take effect and be experienced.
THE PATTERN
Willing hearing ripens into a response through which life’s good becomes lived nourishment.
That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.THE THREAD
Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.Isaiah 55:2 repeats the same roots: שמע (shama, hear and respond), אכל (akhal, eat), and טוב (tov, good). It makes their sequence explicit: attentive hearing opens into eating what is good.
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