What Does Isaiah 16:9 Mean in the King James?

Therefore I will bewail with the weeping of Jazer the vine of Sibmah: I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon, and Elealeh: for the shouting for thy summer fruits and for thy harvest is fallen.
Isaiah 16:9 · KJV
The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

The tears become the water that reaches a vine whose harvest shout has fallen.

The verse holds the reader inside the moment abundance collapses: the vine and named cities are soaked in tears while the cry over summer fruit and harvest has fallen. Sorrow reaches into the physical world of fruit, place, and provision.

אֲרַוֶּךְ

ʾăravvekh

GROWS FROM

רוה

R-W-H

To be saturated or drink one’s fill; in causative forms, to saturate or water.

The verb holds watering together with being filled to satisfaction. Here tears saturate the vine and cities, giving grief the physical force of water.

ALSO GROWS

ravah: Be saturated; drink one’s fill.

רָוָה

This branch carries the sense of fullness and saturation inside the verse’s verb for watering.

hirvah: Saturate or water.

הִרְוָה

This causative form shows the speaker’s tears soaking the places named in the verse.

קְצִיר

qəṣîr

GROWS FROM

קצר

Q-TS-R

To reap or cut down; in another usage, to become short.

The Hebrew word for harvest comes from the verb for reaping: harvest is the act of cutting and gathering. The shout that has fallen belongs to the very moment when ripeness should become a gathered yield.

ALSO GROWS

qatsar: Reap; cut down.

קָצִר

This verb names the action contained in the word for harvest.

qotser: Reaper; one who gathers by reaping.

קֹצֵר

The harvest root points to the person carrying out the cutting and gathering.

qatsir: Harvest; the crop gathered by reaping.

קָצִיר

This is the noun used for the harvest whose shout has fallen.

חֶשְׁבּוֹן

ḥešbōn

GROWS FROM

חשב

Ḥ-SH-B

To think, devise, or reckon.

Heshbon’s name carries the language of reckoning and thought. The speaker’s tears reach the named city itself, bringing grief even to the place whose name holds that sense of reckoning.

ALSO GROWS

chashav: Think, devise, reckon.

חָשַׁב

This verb supplies the root sense carried by Heshbon’s name.

machashavah: Thought, plan, or design.

מַחֲשָׁבָה

This branch shows the root’s movement from reckoning toward what is thought or planned.

cheshbon: Reckoning, account, or calculation.

חֶשְׁבּוֹן

The city’s name echoes this word for reckoning.

Scripture gives grief physical reach through tears and weeping that fall upon lives and places touched by loss.

I am weary with my groaning; all the night make I my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears.
Psalm 6:6 · KJVThe speaker’s tears soak the bed through the night, making grief bodily and measurable.
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.
Jeremiah 48:32 · KJVThe verse names the vine, plants, fruit, and vintage as the landscape over which lament falls.
Jesus wept.
John 11:35 · KJVThe sentence makes grief visible in Jesus’ own weeping.
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
Psalm 126:5 · KJV

The harvest noun here, ⁨קְצִיר⁩ (qatsir), comes from ⁨קצר⁩ (qatsar), the root of “reap” in the psalm. The shared root places tears beside reaping in both verses, while Isaiah’s harvest shout has fallen and the psalm speaks of reaping in joy.

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Isaiah 16:9 KJV Meaning