What Does Isaiah 10:23 Mean in the King James?
For the Lord GOD of hosts shall make a consumption, even determined, in the midst of all 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
The devastation fills the land, yet the verse names it as both a completion and a decree.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two truths together: destruction reaches through the land, and that destruction is determined. It does not soften the devastation or describe it as limitless.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the fear that a devastation filling everything has no boundary: the verse names it as a completion already decreed.
THE ROOT
כָּלָה
kalah
GROWS FROM
כלה
k-l-h
Complete, finish, bring to an end.
This word carries both consumption and completion: what consumes also brings something to its end. English can make the destruction stand alone, while the root holds the sense of a finishing inside it.
ALSO GROWS
kalah: Finish, reach an end.
כָּלָה
The verbal form makes clear that the consumption in the verse is also an act of completion.
kilyon: Wasting away, destruction.
כִּלָּיוֹן
This branch shows how the root’s sense of an ending can be experienced as ruin.
נֶחֱרָצָה
necheratsah
GROWS FROM
חרץ
ḥ-r-ṣ
Decide, decree, determine.
“determined” in this verse is necheratsah. The word carries the force of a decision made definite. Beside kalah, it describes devastation as both a finishing and something decreed.
ALSO GROWS
charats: Decide, decree.
חָרַץ
The root verb shows the decision contained in the verse’s word “determined.”
necherats: Decided, decreed.
נֶחֱרָץ
This related form makes the sense of a fixed decision visible in the same root family.
THE PATTERN
Scripture can name sweeping destruction as both a completion and a determined act.
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.Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth.For he will finish the work, and cut it short in righteousness: because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth.THE THREAD
Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth.Isaiah 28:22 repeats the same Hebrew pairing of consumption and determination. It lets the two roots sound together: kalah names the completion, while charats names the decree.
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