What Does Isaiah 16:8 Mean in the King James?
For the fields of Heshbon languish, and the vine of Sibmah: the lords of the heathen have broken down the principal plants thereof, they are come even unto Jazer, they wandered through the wilderness: her branches are stretched out, they are gone over the sea.
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 vine’s branches are its “sent-out” shoots: their reach measures both its former abundance and how far the devastation has spread.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to you when something that once flourished is exposed to forces reaching its farthest edge. Its branches still stretch across distance, but that reach offers no shield; the damage runs from field to wilderness to sea.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that expansion proves protection: something can reach far and still be struck down.
THE ROOT
שְׁלֻחוֹתֶיהָ
sheluḥoteha
GROWS FROM
שלח
š-l-ḥ
Send forth, release, or stretch out.
The word for branches carries the movement of being sent forth: these are the vine’s extensions reaching outward. English makes them sound like static limbs, but the Hebrew pictures their spread across the land, until the vine’s reach also marks how far its ruin travels.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send forth, release.
שָׁלַח
The same root gives the shoots their sense of outward movement; here, what has been sent forth is exposed to destruction.
shaliach: Messenger, one who is sent.
שְׁלִיחַ
A person sent out and a shoot sent forth share the root’s image of extension from a source.
THE PATTERN
A vine’s farthest growth remains vulnerable to loss and withering.
O vine of Sibmah, I will weep for thee with the weeping of Jazer: thy plants are gone over the sea, they reach even to the sea of Jazer: the spoiler is fallen upon thy summer fruits and upon thy vintage.Why hast thou then broken down her hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck her?If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.THE THREAD
For if thou refuse to let them go, and wilt hold them still,The Hebrew root beneath “branches” is שָׁלַח (shalach), meaning send forth or release; it also lies beneath “let them go” here. Isaiah pictures what has been sent outward, while this verse gives the same root the force of release from what holds fast.
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