What Does Isaiah 26:18 Mean in the King James?
We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind; we have not wrought any deliverance in the earth; neither have the inhabitants of the world fallen.
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
Painful effort is not proof that deliverance has arrived: here, labor brings forth only ruach.
THE MEANING
Your striving is real and painful, yet it can bring forth only ruach, wind, the same word that also means breath and spirit, while no deliverance takes hold on earth. The inhabitants of the world do not fall; the verse holds the distance between labor and the change that labor longs to produce.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Painful effort automatically produces the outcome it seeks.
THE ROOT
יְשׁוּעֹת
yeshuot
GROWS FROM
ישע
y-sh-ʿ
To deliver, bringing someone out of danger into safety.
The Hebrew uses a plural form, yeshuot, where the KJV says “any deliverance.” This root carries rescue as movement out of constriction into spaciousness, yet the verse says the labor has not brought that movement into the earth.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: To deliver or bring out of danger.
יָשַׁע
The verb names the movement the labor in this verse fails to produce.
moshia: Deliverer; one who brings out.
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This form makes clear that deliverance is an act of bringing someone out, not simply an outcome achieved by strain.
yeshuah: Deliverance.
יְשׁוּעָה
This singular form shares the root in the verse’s plural yeshuot.
רוּחַ
ruach
GROWS FROM
רוּחַ
r-w-ḥ
Moving air; breath.
Ruach can mean wind, breath, or spirit; English “wind” gives only one face of the word. The labor brings forth motion in the air, but not the deliverance it strains toward, an image of effort that dissipates without producing the hoped-for change.
ALSO GROWS
ruach chayim: Breath of life.
רוּחַ חַיִּים
The same word for wind can name the breath associated with life, sharpening the contrast between mere wind and a living outcome.
ruach elohim: Wind, breath, or spirit of God.
רוּחַ אֱלֹהִים
The phrase preserves the word’s range: the same ruach that is wind here can also name breath or spirit.
THE PATTERN
Strenuous human labor can yield no lasting result by itself.
A Song of degrees for Solomon. Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.THE THREAD
The LORD is my strength and song, and he is become my salvation: he is my God, and I will prepare him an habitation; my father’s God, and I will exalt him.Isaiah 26:18 uses yeshuot, “deliverances,” for what labor cannot bring forth. Exodus 15:2 uses the same root in yeshuah, rendered “salvation,” and names the LORD as that deliverance; the shared root sets human effort beside the one who brings out.
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