What Does Isaiah 24:7 Mean in the King James?
The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merryhearted do sigh.
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
Gladness is not sealed off from its sources: when the vine’s life falters, the heart joins the lament.
THE MEANING
Sorrow reaches from the vineyard into the inner life: the wine mourns, the vine languishes, and the merryhearted sigh. The verse shows gladness as connected to what nourishes it, so what fails around the heart can sound within it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that joy can remain untouched when what nourishes it is failing.
THE ROOT
אָבַל
ʾāval
GROWS FROM
אבל
to mourn, grieve, lament
“mourneth” in this verse is ʾāval. The new wine takes the verb for mourning, so grief is not confined to the human heart: the source of festivity is pictured as a mourner too. Alongside the vine’s decline and the hearts’ sigh, the root makes this one shared lament moving from what nourishes to those nourished.
ALSO GROWS
ʾēvel: mourning, grief
אֵבֶל
This noun makes the wine’s personified grief part of the same word family as mourning itself.
ʾāvēl: a mourner, one who grieves
אָבֵל
The root can name both the grief and the one who carries it; here even the wine is cast in the mourner’s role.
אֻמְלְלָה
ʾumlelāh
GROWS FROM
אמל
to droop, languish, waste away
“languisheth” in this verse is ʾumlelāh. The root names a wasting or drooping, making the vine’s decline an active collapse in the same sequence as mourning and sighing. The same root describes a fig tree in Joel 1:12, where the verse also says that joy has withered from people.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāmal: to languish, droop, waste away
אָמַל
This is the root verb behind the vine’s weakening.
ʾumlal: languished, withered
אֻמְלַל
This form appears of the fig tree in Joel 1:12, where the failing plant is joined to the loss of human joy.
THE PATTERN
When what sustains shared celebration fails, grief reaches the heart and silences gladness.
The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.And I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; and I will bring up sackcloth upon all loins, and baldness upon every head; and I will make it as the mourning of an only son, and the end thereof as a bitter day.And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:THE THREAD
The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.Isaiah’s אֻמְלְלָה (ʾumlelāh, “languishes”) and Joel’s אֻמְלַל (ʾumlal, “languished”) share the root אמל (ʾ-m-l, “languish”). Joel makes the connection explicit: as the plants fail, joy itself is said to wither from people.
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