What Does Isaiah 1:9 Mean in the King James?
Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
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
The small survivor is what keeps ruin from becoming total erasure.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks from the edge of collapse: what remains in you still matters, even when it is very little. It names survival without pretending that nothing has been lost.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that if only a little remains, nothing meaningful remains.
THE ROOT
הוֹתִיר
hôtîr
GROWS FROM
יתר
To remain over, be left as a remainder, or exceed.
The verb translated “left” describes the LORD causing something to remain. This same root forms words for remainder and surplus, so the survivor is not just an absence where more was lost: it is what remains and still carries consequence.
ALSO GROWS
yether: Remainder, surplus.
יֶתֶר
It makes the act of leaving sound like preserving what remains over after loss.
yitron: Advantage, profit, what is gained or left over.
יִתְרוֹן
It echoes the verse’s claim that even a small remainder has consequence.
שָׂרִיד
śārîḏ
GROWS FROM
שרד
To survive or escape destruction.
English “remnant” can sound like a leftover quantity, but this Hebrew word names a survivor: someone or something that persists through danger. The verse’s smallness does not diminish the word’s force; it identifies what has made it through.
ALSO GROWS
śāraḏ: To survive, escape destruction.
שָׂרַד
The verb names the endurance held inside the noun “survivor.”
śərîḏîm: Survivors, those who remain.
שְׂרִידִים
The plural keeps the focus on living beings who persist, not merely on leftover pieces.
THE PATTERN
The survival of a small remainder keeps a people from being wholly erased.
And God sent me before you to preserve you a posterity in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.For though thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant of them shall return: the consumption decreed shall overflow with righteousness.Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace.THE THREAD
And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha.Paul’s Greek quotation renders Isaiah’s spared remainder as “seed” (σπέρμα, spérma, seed). What survives is not merely a count left behind; it is the small living beginning from which continuation can grow.
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