What Does Isaiah 23:16 Mean in the King James?
Take an harp, go about the city, thou harlot that hast been forgotten; make sweet melody, sing many songs, that thou mayest be remembered.
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 makes remembrance an act of performance: the one called forgotten is told to turn herself into public music.
THE MEANING
The words speak to the ache of being forgotten now, then place it beside a sharp, public response: take up the harp, fill the city with song, become memorable. Remembrance here comes through repeated sound carried into the streets. The image stays uncomfortable: the forgotten woman is told to make herself a spectacle to be seen again.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It unsettles the belief that being forgotten is permanent: the verse imagines remembrance being re-entered through voice and repetition.
THE ROOT
תִּזָּכְרִי
tizzāḵrî
GROWS FROM
זכר
Remember, call to mind, mention.
“remembered” in this verse is tizzāḵrî. The Hebrew root joins remembering with bringing something to mind or mention. The songs are not background music: they make the forgotten one present in the city’s hearing.
ALSO GROWS
zēkher: Remembrance, mention.
זֵכֶר
This branch shows remembrance as something that can be spoken and brought into public attention.
zikkārôn: Memorial, remembrance.
זִכָּרוֹן
A memorial keeps someone or something present across time, echoing the verse’s effort to be remembered.
נִשְׁכָּחָה
nishkāḥāh
GROWS FROM
שכח
Forget, cease to remember.
The verse sets the state of being forgotten beside the act of becoming remembered, using two different Hebrew roots. Its repeated music answers erasure with sound, but the verse leaves the pressure of that performance intact.
ALSO GROWS
shākaḥ: To forget.
שָׁכַח
The source verb names the lapse in memory that the woman in the verse is trying to overcome.
nishkāḥ: Forgotten.
נִשְׁכָּח
This form describes someone as having fallen out of remembrance, the condition the verse places at its center.
THE PATTERN
Public remembrance is carried forward through repeated words and songs that keep a name or testimony present.
And it shall come to pass, when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that this song shall testify against them as a witness; for it shall not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed: for I know their imagination which they go about, even now, before I have brought them into the land which I sware.I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations: therefore shall the people praise thee for ever and ever.And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.THE THREAD
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.Both verses use שכח (shākaḥ), the root meaning “forget,” but place its pressure differently: here a forgotten woman is told to make herself heard; there even a mother’s forgetting is named before the words “I will not forget thee.” The shared root holds human erasure beside a remembrance that does not depend on performance.
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