What Does Isaiah 14:31 Mean in the King James?
Howl, O gate; cry, O city; thou, whole Palestina, art dissolved: for there shall come from the north a smoke, and none shall be alone in his appointed times.
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 land’s dissolving is a melting: its whole form gives way as an appointed force arrives from the north.
THE MEANING
The alarm is public and total: the gate and city cry, and the whole land melts as smoke comes from the north. The closing phrase evokes a complete muster, with no one absent from the appointed gathering.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the comfort that a crisis can stay at the gate or affect only isolated people; here the gate, city, and whole land share the alarm, and the advancing force arrives together.
THE ROOT
נָמוֹג
namog
GROWS FROM
מוּג
mūg
To melt, lose firmness, or dissolve.
“dissolved” in this verse is namog. This root pictures not just disappearance but loss of form through melting. The whole land gives way under pressure, as wax melts before fire and hills melt in the LORD’s presence.
ALSO GROWS
yamug: Melteth, as wax before fire.
יָמוּג
Psalm 68:2 uses this form to show how completely a seemingly solid thing can lose its shape.
yamogu: Melted, describing hills.
יָמֹגוּ
Psalm 97:5 extends the same melting image from a substance to the land itself.
מוֹעֲדָיו
mo'adav
GROWS FROM
יעד
ya'ad
To appoint, designate, or set a meeting.
“appointed times” in this verse is mo'adav. The phrase carries the sense of an assigned time or meeting, giving the advancing threat the shape of a gathered force. The root family also holds the idea of assembly, which makes the line’s claim that none is alone feel like a complete muster.
ALSO GROWS
mo'ed: An appointed time, meeting, or appointed place.
מוֹעֵד
This noun makes the force’s arrival feel set and gathered, rather than solitary or scattered.
ʿedah: An assembly or congregation.
עֵדָה
The assembly sense in the same word family illuminates why no one is described as alone in the appointed gathering.
THE PATTERN
As threat approaches, fear spreads beyond individuals and exposes how little can hold its form.
Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the LORD cometh, for it is nigh at hand;The hills melted like wax at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the Lord of the whole earth.Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.THE THREAD
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked perish at the presence of God.The same root, מוּג (mug, “to melt”), appears in the psalm’s image of wax losing its form beside smoke being driven away. That pairing opens Isaiah’s image further: the smoke announces an advancing force, and the land’s melting reveals its destabilizing effect.
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