What Does Isaiah 24:12 Mean in the King James?
In the city is left desolation, and the gate is smitten with destruction.
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
What remains inside the city is desolation, and ruin reaches even the gate, the boundary of entry and defense.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks in the present: the city’s remaining condition is desolation, and its gate is battered by ruin. The boundary that marks entry and defense is itself struck, so destruction reaches both the place and its threshold.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a city’s boundary is beyond the reach of ruin: the gate itself is smitten.
THE ROOT
נִשְׁאַר
nish'ar
GROWS FROM
שאר
sha'ar
remain; be left over
The Hebrew places the emphasis on what remains: desolation is the residue within the city. The same root can name a remnant, but here it describes what is left as ruin; the root itself does not promise restoration.
ALSO GROWS
sha'ar: remain; be left
שָׁאַר
This verb is the seed beneath “is left,” focusing the line on the condition that remains in the city.
she'ar: remnant; remainder
שְׁאָר
The same root names what survives after loss; Isaiah 10:20 uses it for Israel’s remnant, while this verse names desolation as the remainder.
שַׁמָּה
shammah
GROWS FROM
שמם
sh-m-m
be desolate; be appalled
This root holds desolation alongside the state of being appalled, so the ruin is more than empty space: it is a condition of devastation. Paired with “what remains,” desolation becomes the city’s residue.
ALSO GROWS
shamem: be desolate; be appalled
שָׁמֵם
The verbal form shows the state behind the verse’s desolation: devastation that leaves a place ruined or stunned.
shemamah: desolation; waste
שְׁמָמָה
This related noun names the wasted condition that the verse says remains within the city.
THE PATTERN
A city’s ruin reaches its shared spaces and thresholds, leaving public life exposed and emptied.
A Psalm of Asaph. O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.I have cut off the nations: their towers are desolate; I made their streets waste, that none passeth by: their cities are destroyed, so that there is no man, that there is none inhabitant.And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.THE THREAD
And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon the LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth.Isaiah 24:12 uses שאר (sha’ar, remain/be left) in saying what remains in the city; Isaiah 10:20 uses the same root in “remnant.” The root holds both outcomes: what remains here is desolation, while elsewhere it names a people who no longer rely on the one who struck them.
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