What Does Isaiah 10:3 Mean in the King James?
And what will ye do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from far? to whom will ye flee for help? and where will ye leave your glory?
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 day of visitation is the moment attention becomes accounting, and the weight called glory cannot simply be carried elsewhere.
THE MEANING
This question speaks wherever power rests on withholding justice: when that order is called to account, what refuge remains, and where can its weight be set down? The verse makes status precarious, because even the glory one has gathered must be left somewhere. Its question stays open before the reader: to whom will you flee, and where will you leave your glory?
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that status, possessions, or powerful allies can shield injustice from its accounting.
THE ROOT
פְּקֻדָּה
pequddah
GROWS FROM
פקד
p-q-d
to attend to, take account of, muster, or appoint
English “visitation” can sound like a passing event, but פְּקֻדָּה grows from the language of attending to and taking account. Here the day is when those who have wielded power unjustly are met by that attention in full.
ALSO GROWS
paqad: attend to, visit, take account of, or appoint
פָּקַד
The same verb can describe care or reckoning; Isaiah shows what divine attention means when it meets injustice.
mifqad: numbering or muster
מִפְקָד
The language of mustering suggests that what has been scattered or hidden is gathered into an account.
כָּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
to be heavy or weighty, and by extension to treat as weighty
כָּבוֹד carries the sense of weight beneath the English “glory.” The question “where will you leave your glory?” gives status and splendor a physical edge: their weight must be set down somewhere, and there is no place beyond the reckoning.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: heavy, weighty
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the underlying sense of kavod concrete: what is called glory has weight.
kibbed: honored, treated as weighty
כִּבֵּד
Honor is a way of assigning weight; Isaiah asks where that claimed weight can be left when power is called to account.
THE PATTERN
Power used to deny justice eventually faces an accounting that refuge and possessions cannot evade.
For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?THE THREAD
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?The KJV’s “visitest” and Isaiah’s “visitation” share פקד (paqad), meaning to attend to or visit. In the psalm that attention is wonder; in Isaiah it is reckoning, showing how the same attention meets what it finds.
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