What Does Isaiah 23:9 Mean in the King James?
The LORD of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride of all glory, and to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth.
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 turns honor into a weight reversal: the earth’s weighty ones are made light by the LORD’s purpose.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks wherever a person, name, or success seems too impressive to question. What carries the earth’s honor can be brought low, and what dazzles as splendor can lose its standing. The LORD’s purpose reaches beneath reputation and exposes its limits.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that public honor or dazzling success gives anyone lasting weight or immunity.
THE ROOT
לְהָקֵל
lehāqēl
GROWS FROM
קלל
q-l-l
To be light, or to make something light and slight; by extension, to treat it with contempt.
“Bring into contempt” carries the image of making light what was taken seriously. Beside the verse’s “honourable,” whose root means heavy, the Hebrew gives a vivid reversal: the earth’s weighty ones are made light.
ALSO GROWS
qal: Light or slight; of little weight.
קַל
It makes the verse’s movement from honor to contempt a shift in weight, not only reputation.
qelalah: Curse or denunciation.
קְלָלָה
This branch shows how making someone “light” can become an act of lowering or dishonoring them.
נִכְבְּדֵי
nikhbedē
GROWS FROM
כבד
k-b-d
To be heavy or weighty; the root gives honor the sense of weight or significance.
“the honourable” in this verse is nikhbedē. The “honourable” are literally the weighty ones of the earth. The verse places that weight next to the verb “make light,” showing that worldly importance can be reversed by the LORD’s purpose.
ALSO GROWS
kavod: Weight, honor, or glory.
כָּבוֹד
This familiar word for glory preserves the root’s image of weight and substance.
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
This branch makes the physical image beneath “honourable” plain: their standing is described as weight.
לְחַלֵּל
leḥallēl
GROWS FROM
חלל
ḥ-l-l
To profane or make common; to strip something of its special standing.
The verb translated “stain” also carries the sense of profaning or making common. The verse describes the LORD’s purpose as stripping splendor of the distinction that made it seem untouchable.
ALSO GROWS
ḥol: The common or ordinary.
חֹל
This branch shows the movement from elevated splendor toward ordinary, unprotected status.
ḥillul: Profanation or desecration.
חִלּוּל
It illuminates “stain” as a loss of claimed distinction, rather than only a mark on the surface.
THE PATTERN
The LORD overturns human rankings, bringing exalted status down and lifting those counted low.
The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and the LORD alone shall be exalted in that day.He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;THE THREAD
For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?Both verses use יָעַץ (yaʿats), meaning to counsel or resolve, for the LORD’s purpose. Here that purpose strips human splendor of its weight; Isaiah 14:27 says no power can undo what the LORD has resolved.
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