What Does Isaiah 23:2 Mean in the King James?
Be still, ye inhabitants of the isle; thou whom the merchants of Zidon, that pass over the sea, have replenished.
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 sea’s traffic can fill the city, but it cannot give the city control over the flow that sustains it.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to the part of you sustained by what arrives from beyond your reach. It places that replenishment beside a command to fall silent: abundance can fill you without giving you authority over its source.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that being supplied means being secure.
THE ROOT
דֹּמּוּ
dommu
GROWS FROM
דמם
damam
To be silent, cease, or become still.
The root gives “be still” the shade of silence and cessation, setting the city’s hush beside the trade that has replenished it. Its branches show that this silence can also be quiet waiting, so the word holds both imposed quiet and attentive stillness.
ALSO GROWS
Demamah: Stillness, silence.
דְּמָמָה
The KJV’s “still small voice” in 1 Kings 19:12 uses this related word, showing the quiet shade carried by the root.
Dumiyyah: Silence, quiet waiting.
דּוּמִיָּה
Psalm 62:1 uses this related word for the soul that “waiteth upon God,” showing how the same root can name silence as waiting.
THE PATTERN
When a place is filled by trade, the end of that traffic exposes how dependent its abundance was.
The ships of Tarshish did sing of thee in thy market: and thou wast replenished, and made very glorious in the midst of the seas.And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee;THE THREAD
To the chief Musician, to Jeduthun, A Psalm of David. Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.Isaiah’s “be still” and the silence beneath Psalm 62:1’s “waiteth” grow from דמם (damam), meaning to be silent or still. In Isaiah, that silence is spoken over a city replenished by passing trade; in the psalm, it becomes the soul’s quiet waiting upon God.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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