What Does Isaiah 17:1 Mean in the King James?
The burden of Damascus. Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
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
A city’s name is not a shield: Damascus is named as a city and as rubble in the same line.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now of a city’s total unmaking: Damascus is taken out of the category of city and becomes rubble. Its civic form does not preserve it; the destruction is held plainly, without softening.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that an established city is permanent simply because it still stands.
THE ROOT
מַשָּׂא
maśśāʾ
GROWS FROM
נָשָׂא
n-ś-ʾ
To lift, carry, or bear.
“burden” in this verse is maśśāʾ. The word carries more than a forecast: מַשָּׂא (maśśāʾ) is a load, from נָשָׂא (nāśāʾ), to lift or carry, and it also names a prophetic utterance. The city’s fall is spoken as something borne, while the next words show that fall as physical ruin.
ALSO GROWS
nāśāʾ: To lift, carry, or bear.
נָשָׂא
This is the verb beneath “burden”: the oracle is a weight carried in speech.
nāśîʾ: Chief or prince; traditionally connected with one lifted up.
נָשִׂיא
This related form keeps the idea of lifting visible in the same word family, alongside the weight that the verse names.
THE PATTERN
What appears built and lasting can be dismantled until its identity as a city disappears.
For thou hast made of a city an heap; of a defenced city a ruin: a palace of strangers to be no city; it shall never be built.And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.THE THREAD
The burden of Tyre. Howl, ye ships of Tarshish; for it is laid waste, so that there is no house, no entering in: from the land of Chittim it is revealed to them.The opening noun is again מַשָּׂא (maśśāʾ, burden), from נָשָׂא (nāśāʾ, carry or lift). The same carried word is laid over Tyre’s devastation, making Damascus’s ruin part of a recurring pattern attached to city names.
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