What Does Isaiah 14:21 Mean in the King James?
Prepare slaughter for his children for the iniquity of their fathers; that they do not rise, nor possess the land, nor fill the face of the world with cities.
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 verse makes slaughter serve the erasure of a people’s future standing, landholding, and visible place in the world.
THE MEANING
Now, the verse names the brutal logic of inherited guilt: children are marked for slaughter because of their fathers’ crookedness, with their rising, possessing land, and filling the world’s face cut off. The violence reaches beyond individual lives to erase a people’s future presence.
THE ROOT
יָקֻמוּ
yāqūmū
GROWS FROM
קום
קום (qūm): rise, stand, be established.
English “rise” can sound like mere movement, but קום also carries standing and being established. The verse then names what that denied standing would lead to, possessing land and filling the world’s face, so the negation reaches beyond bodily survival to a people’s established place.
ALSO GROWS
qūm: Rise; stand.
קוּם
This basic form names the action the verse denies, making the children’s inability to rise the first stage of their exclusion.
māqōm: Place; standing-place.
מָקוֹם
This word contains the root’s consonants and connects standing to having a place, sharpening the verse’s movement from “rise” to possessing land.
מָלְאוּ
mālʾū
GROWS FROM
מלא
מלא (malāʾ): fill, be full, make full.
“fill” in this verse is mālʾū. The verb makes the intended scale concrete: it is the world’s face that is to be filled with cities. Beside קום, מלא shows the verse closing off both a people’s standing and its visible occupation of the world.
ALSO GROWS
mālēʾ: Be full; be filled.
מָלֵא
The same root describes a state of fullness, clarifying what the verse says the children will be prevented from bringing about.
məlōʾ: Fullness; that which fills.
מְלֹא
This noun carries the same consonants and echoes the verse’s image of a world made full with cities.
THE PATTERN
A people’s future takes visible form in their ability to rise, inhabit land, and fill the world’s face.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.The righteous shall inherit the land, and dwell therein for ever.And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;THE THREAD
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.Both verses use יָקֻמוּ (yāqūmū), from קום, for what will not stand: in Isaiah, the children; in the Psalm, the ungodly in judgment. The repeated wording opens the root’s range from being prevented from standing in the world to failing to stand in judgment.
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