What Does Isaiah 18:5 Mean in the King James?
For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.
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
In Hebrew, even “harvest” is a cutting, and here another cut comes before the fruit can be gathered.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the moment when growth appears nearly ready: its shoots can still be cut before the fruit is gathered. Ripening is underway, yet the harvest has not arrived.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that visible ripening guarantees a harvest.
THE ROOT
קָצִיר
qatsir
GROWS FROM
קצר
qatsar
To reap; to cut short.
The Hebrew word for harvest grows from qatsar, “to reap” or “cut short”: the harvest already carries a cutting within it. Here the vine is cut before that harvest-cut can gather its fruit.
ALSO GROWS
qatsar: To reap or harvest.
קָצַר
The verb makes clear that harvest is an act of cutting and gathering.
qotser: One who reaps; a reaper.
קוֹצֵר
The reaper performs the cutting contained in the word for harvest.
qatsir: Harvest; the crop gathered by reaping.
קָצִיר
This is the word used here for the harvest that has not yet arrived.
וְכָרַת
ve-kharat
GROWS FROM
כרת
karat
To cut; to sever.
The verb for cutting off the shoots is also used for cutting a covenant and for being cut off. It carries the force of decisive severance, fitting the verse’s repeated removal of the growing branches.
ALSO GROWS
karat berit: To cut a covenant.
כָּרַת בְּרִית
The same verb used for severing branches can describe the binding act of making a covenant.
nikhrat: To be cut off.
נִכְרַת
This form names the state of removal that the verse’s cutting brings about.
THE PATTERN
As fruit approaches its threshold, the growth meets a decisive cut, whether pruning, harvesting, or removal.
Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great.Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come.THE THREAD
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.Both verses use קָצִיר (qatsir, “harvest”), from qatsar, “to reap” or “cut short.” Isaiah shows branches cut before the harvest; Jeremiah names the harvest as past while deliverance is still absent, placing the same threshold on the far side of the cut.
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