What Does Isaiah 16:4 Mean in the King James?
Let mine outcasts dwell with thee, Moab; be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler: for the extortioner is at an end, the spoiler ceaseth, the oppressors are consumed out of 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 verse holds refuge open for those driven out while declaring that the force that tramples them will end.
THE MEANING
Those driven out need a place to live, and you are asked to let your own place become cover between them and the one who harms them. The verse holds that shelter beside a declaration that the extortioner, destruction, and trampling end. It speaks now: displacement is met with shelter, and violent power does not get the final claim on the land.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person forced out has become someone else’s problem. The force driving people out does not own the future; the verse says it ends.
THE ROOT
נִדָּחַי
niddāḥay
GROWS FROM
נדח
to drive away, thrust aside
English makes outcasts sound like a social category; the Hebrew carries the action of being driven away. The verse asks for refuge against the force that has displaced them.
ALSO GROWS
hiddiaḥ: to drive away or turn aside
הִדִּיחַ
It names displacement as something done to a person, not who that person is.
niddāḥim: outcasts, the driven-away ones
נִדָּחִים
This form makes the verse’s appeal concrete: the people needing shelter are those who have been pushed away.
סֵתֶר
sēter
GROWS FROM
סתר
to hide or conceal
“covert” in this verse is sēter. The shelter is a place of concealment, a cover that interrupts the spoiler’s reach. Protection is pictured as immediate and spatial: the threatened person can be hidden from harm.
ALSO GROWS
sāṯar: to hide or conceal
סָתַר
The verb reveals the action inside the covert: making someone less exposed to the threat.
mistār: a hiding place or refuge
מִסְתָּר
This related form carries the same idea of concealment into a place where someone can be sheltered.
שׁוֹדֵד
shōdēd
GROWS FROM
שדד
to devastate, despoil, lay waste
The Hebrew repeats this root in the spoiler and in the word for destruction: the devastator and the devastation belong to the same sound-family. The verse names that force, then says it ceases.
ALSO GROWS
shōd: violence, devastation, destruction
שֹׁד
The verse uses this same-root noun immediately after saying the spoiler ceases, linking the attacker with the ruin left behind.
shādūd: ravaged, despoiled
שָׁדוּד
This form shows the condition the spoiler leaves behind, the damaged state from which refuge is needed.
THE PATTERN
Refuge becomes real when the exposed are received into shelter and the force pressing on them is denied permanence.
For thou hast been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat, when the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm against the wall.The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:THE THREAD
The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: he gathereth together the outcasts of Israel.The same נדח root names the outcasts in both verses. Isaiah shows them needing refuge from the force driving them away; Psalm 147 shows them gathered, making shelter and gathering two moments in one movement.
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