What Does Isaiah 14:15 Mean in the King James?
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.
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 voice that claims the highest place is carried toward the pit’s farthest recesses, reversing its own ascent.
THE MEANING
The verse turns the claim to the highest place into an arrival in the pit’s deepest reaches. The KJV’s “hell” renders שְׁאוֹל (She’ol, the realm of the dead), while בּוֹר (bor, pit) makes the endpoint a hollow below. תּוּרָד (tūrād, “you will be brought down”) describes a descent the speaker does not direct.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that reaching for the highest place makes you untouchable; the exalted one can still be brought down.
THE ROOT
תּוּרָד
tūrād
GROWS FROM
ירד
y-r-d
To descend or go down; in this form, to be brought down.
“brought down” in this verse is tūrād. The Hebrew form is passive: the speaker is acted upon and carried down. The root holds both descent itself and the force that brings someone down.
ALSO GROWS
vayered: Came down or descended.
וַיֵּרֶד
In Genesis 11:5, the same root describes the LORD coming down to see the tower builders’ heaven-reaching city; the root places the claimed ascent beside a descent.
horid: Brought or caused something to descend.
הוֹרִיד
This causative form makes explicit the agency carried by “brought down”: the root can name both descending and causing descent.
יַרְכְּתֵי
yarketei
GROWS FROM
ירך
y-r-kh
Thigh or flank; by extension, a side or remote part.
English “sides” can sound like the pit’s walls. The Hebrew points to its far recesses, placing the descent deep in the pit’s interior.
ALSO GROWS
yarekh: Thigh or flank.
יָרֵךְ
This concrete bodily word shows the root’s sense of a side or flank beneath the more spatial image of the pit’s recesses.
yarkah: A side or far part of a place.
יַרְכָּה
This form clarifies that the destination is not merely beside the pit but in its remote reaches.
THE PATTERN
A self-claimed ascent can end in a descent that strips away the height it claimed.
Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.THE THREAD
And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted to heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell.Luke makes the vertical reversal explicit: what is exalted to heaven is thrust down to hell. The image opens Isaiah’s line as a reversal of claimed height, carried out through descent.
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