What Does Isaiah 22:9 Mean in the King James?
Ye have seen also the breaches of the city of David, that they are many: and ye gathered together the waters of the lower pool.
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 city of the beloved is seen with many openings, yet its waters are gathered into reserve.
THE MEANING
You see the many breaches in the city of the beloved, and you gather the waters of the lower pool. The verse holds vulnerability and provision together: the openings are real, and the water is still gathered. What is exposed does not erase what sustains.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that visible damage means nothing remains to be preserved is undone here: the water is gathered while the breaches are plainly seen.
THE ROOT
בִּקְעֵי
biq'ei
GROWS FROM
בקע
To split or cleave open.
“breaches” in this verse is biq'ei. The word pictures many split places in the city, not one vague weakness. This root can describe an opening that makes a path, but here the opening is a vulnerability in the beloved city.
ALSO GROWS
biq'ah: An open valley or plain, associated with land split open.
בִּקְעָה
The same seed links a breach in a wall with an opening in the land.
baqa: To divide something by splitting it.
בָּקַע
The same verb describes the sea being divided in Psalm 78:13; the root names the opening, while the context shows what that opening makes possible.
וַתְּקַבְּצוּ
vatteqabbetsu
GROWS FROM
קבץ
To gather or collect.
“gathered together” in this verse is vatteqabbetsu. The verb brings what is dispersed into one place. Here the gathered thing is water, but the same root can gather people, too: the action is collection, not merely storage.
ALSO GROWS
qibbetz: To collect or bring together.
קִבֵּץ
Isaiah 56:8 uses this root for gathering Israel’s outcasts, extending the same action from water to people.
niqbetzu: A gathered or assembled group.
נִקְבְּצוּ
This form shows the root’s result: what was spread out becomes gathered, as the waters do here.
דָּוִד
Dawid
GROWS FROM
דוד
Beloved; one dearly loved.
David’s name carries the sense of the beloved, so the city bears more than a geographical label. The verse holds the beloved and the visibly breached together, without pretending that what is loved must be unbroken.
ALSO GROWS
dōd: A beloved person or lover.
דּוֹד
Song of Songs 5:16 uses this word for the beloved, revealing the name’s language of affection.
Dawid: A personal name associated with the beloved.
דָּוִד
In “the city of David,” the name gives the damaged city a nature of belovedness.
THE PATTERN
A place’s capacity to live is linked to how its waters are gathered, directed, and allowed to flow.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.This same Hezekiah also stopped the upper watercourse of Gihon, and brought it straight down to the west side of the city of David. And Hezekiah prospered in all his works.He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.THE THREAD
He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap.The word translated “breaches” comes from בָּקַע (baqa), “to split open,” the same root behind “divided” here. In Isaiah the split marks the city’s vulnerability; here the opening in the sea becomes a passage.
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