What Does Isaiah 17:4 Mean in the King James?
And in that day it shall come to pass, that the glory of Jacob shall be made thin, and the fatness of his flesh shall wax lean.
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’s “glory” is weight, and here even Jacob’s weight is made thin.
THE MEANING
The image reaches you now: visible standing can thin, and even bodily fullness can recede. What seems substantial today is not beyond diminishment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that prestige or abundance makes you untouchable.
THE ROOT
כְּבוֹד
kavod
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty; to give weight.
“glory” in this verse is kavod. Kavod carries the sense of weight and substance, so the verse’s image is more than lost reputation: Jacob’s weight itself thins. The line brings public standing and bodily fullness into one picture of diminished substance.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy, weighty.
כָּבֵד
It makes the physical sense inside “glory” visible: what is weighty can also lose weight.
kibbed: To honor, to treat as weighty.
כִּבֵּד
Honor is expressed as giving someone weight; here Jacob’s weight is instead reduced.
יִדַּל
yiddal
GROWS FROM
דלל
To become low, thin, or diminished.
“made thin” in this verse is yiddal. The word for thinning belongs to a family that also speaks of lowliness and poverty. The verse’s decline reaches both substance and standing: what carries weight becomes diminished.
ALSO GROWS
dal: Poor, lowly, or weak.
דַּל
The shared root joins physical thinness to a loss of means or standing.
dallut: Poverty or a low condition.
דַּלּוּת
This branch shows how the thinning image can describe diminished condition, not just a lean body.
מִשְׁמַן
mishman
GROWS FROM
שמן
To be fat, full, or rich.
The word rendered “fatness” belongs to the same family as oil and growing fat, carrying the sense of stored richness and bodily fullness. As that fullness grows lean, the verse pictures reserve and substance receding.
ALSO GROWS
shemen: Oil or fat.
שֶׁמֶן
Oil is a concentrated richness, linking the body’s fullness to stored abundance.
vayyishman: He grew fat.
וַיִּשְׁמַן
This verb form shows the same root describing the increase of bodily fullness that Isaiah’s image sees recede.
THE PATTERN
Visible strength, status, and abundance can fade or be brought low.
The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.THE THREAD
And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.Both verses use כָּבוֹד (kavod), “weight”: in Isaiah 17:4 Jacob’s weight thins, while Isaiah 40:5 says the LORD’s weight is revealed. The shared word makes the contrast visible between weight that diminishes and weight made known.
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