What Does Isaiah 17:5 Mean in the King James?
And it shall be as when the harvestman gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears with his arm; and it shall be as he that gathereth ears in the valley of Rephaim.
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 second gathering is not a second harvest: Hebrew shifts from collecting the crop to gleaning its scattered remains.
THE MEANING
The verse makes loss visible at the scale of a field: first the reaper takes the crop, then a gleaner searches among the scattered ears. What remains is counted one ear at a time against the breadth of what has been cut.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the lie that a few surviving pieces make the loss small: the verse measures the remnant against a whole harvest.
THE ROOT
מְלַקֵּט
melaqqeṭ
GROWS FROM
לקט
l-q-ṭ
To glean or gather scattered pieces.
“gathereth ears” in this verse is melaqqeṭ. English uses gather for both collecting the crop and picking up individual ears, but Hebrew changes roots. לקט makes the second action a search among what the first harvest leaves behind.
ALSO GROWS
laqaṭ: To glean or gather up.
לָקַט
The verb describes picking up ears one by one, as the gleaner does here.
leqeṭ: Gleanings; grain left after reaping.
לֶקֶט
This noun names the scattered remainder, the material of this second gathering.
יִקְצֹר
yiqṣor
GROWS FROM
קצר
q-ṣ-r
To reap or cut; the same root also carries the sense of being short.
“reapeth” in this verse is yiqṣor. The English word reap gives the cutting action, while the root also holds the sense of shortening. Beside the verse’s search for leftover ears, the shared root gives the harvest an edge of reduction.
ALSO GROWS
qāṣîr: Harvest or harvest time.
קָצִיר
This is the harvest named earlier in the verse, before the gleaner searches among the ears.
qāṣar: To be short or shortened; also to reap.
קָצַר
The root’s linked senses let the act of reaping echo a field made smaller.
THE PATTERN
After a harvest, what remains in the field becomes visible through gathering.
And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.And Ruth the Moabitess said unto Naomi, Let me now go to the field, and glean ears of corn after him in whose sight I shall find grace. And she said unto her, Go, my daughter.Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.THE THREAD
And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest.The word translated gleanings comes from the same root לקט (laqaṭ) as the gleaner in Isaiah. Isaiah’s field shows a remnant after devastating loss; Leviticus names gleanings as what is left in the field, making the shared word carry both meanings.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us