What Does Isaiah 2:13 Mean in the King James?
And upon all the cedars of Lebanon, that are high and lifted up, and upon all the oaks of Bashan,
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 cedars’ height is no immunity: the verse places what looks untouchable within the LORD’s reach.
THE MEANING
Even the largest and most admired forms stand within the reach of the day that comes upon them. Height and grandeur do not make anything ultimate or beyond judgment.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that what looks impressive, established, or towering is beyond the LORD’s reach.
THE ROOT
הַנִּשָּׂאִים
hannissāʾîm
GROWS FROM
נָשָׂא
nāśāʾ
To lift, bear, or carry.
The English can make “lifted up” sound like a fixed condition; the Hebrew word belongs to a root that also means to bear or carry. That same root forms a word for a leader or prince, linking elevation with rank, the trees’ height belongs to a wider language of what is raised.
ALSO GROWS
nāśāʾ: To lift, bear, or carry.
נָשָׂא
The root holds being raised together with carrying, giving “lifted up” an active sense beneath the English phrase.
nāśîʾ: Leader, chief, or prince.
נָשִׂיא
This branch uses the same root for someone elevated to a position of rank, echoing the verse’s language of height.
הָרָמִים
hārāmîm
GROWS FROM
רוּם
rûm
To rise, be high, or be exalted.
“high” in this verse is hārāmîm. The word for the cedars’ height shares its root with language for rising and exaltation. Paired with “lifted up,” it makes their prominence explicit, then places that prominence among the things reached by the LORD’s day.
ALSO GROWS
rām: High or exalted.
רָם
This is the compact form of the same highness named in the verse.
mārôm: Height or an elevated place.
מָרוֹם
This branch turns the root’s rising into a place of height, extending the verse’s image beyond the trees to elevated places.
THE PATTERN
No height remains beyond the reach of the day that brings the proud low and levels what stands high.
For the day of the LORD of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up; and he shall be brought low:Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth;THE THREAD
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.Isaiah 6:1 uses the same Hebrew roots for “high” and “lifted up” to describe the Lord enthroned. Here those roots describe Lebanon’s cedars and Bashan’s oaks, placing their height within the reach of the day of the LORD.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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