What Does Isaiah 3:1 Mean in the King James?
For, behold, the Lord, the LORD of hosts, doth take away from Jerusalem and from Judah the stay and the staff, the whole stay of bread, and the whole stay of water,
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 word for “stay” grows from a root meaning “lean,” so the verse names bread and water as supports Jerusalem leans on, and says they are being taken away.
THE MEANING
The passage exposes how precarious public order becomes when its supports are withdrawn: bread and water are named among what is taken away. The collapse reaches the body’s most basic needs, not only its institutions.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that civic order and daily provision are self-secured once a people has them; this verse presents both as vulnerable to removal.
THE ROOT
מַשְׁעֵן
mashʿēn
GROWS FROM
שׁען
sh-ʿ-n
To lean upon or rely on; by extension, to support.
English gives “stay” and “staff” separate images, but both forms grow from the verb for leaning or relying. The phrase “whole stay of bread” makes bread part of the structure Jerusalem leans on, and names it as support that can be removed.
ALSO GROWS
mashʿēnāh: A staff or support.
מַשְׁעֵנָה
It appears beside “stay” in this verse, showing that both words describe what holds someone up.
shaʿan: To lean on or rely upon.
שָׁעַן
The action beneath “stay” reveals that these supports are what Jerusalem depends on.
מֵסִיר
mēsîr
GROWS FROM
סור
s-w-r
To turn aside or depart; in a causative form, to remove.
“take away” in this verse is mēsîr. The verb pictures the supports being made to depart, not simply a lack that happens on its own. Beside the root of “stay,” it makes the verse’s movement stark: what the city leans on is actively taken away.
ALSO GROWS
sûr: To turn aside or depart.
סוּר
This basic sense gives “take away” the image of something being made to leave.
hēsîr: To remove or take away.
הֵסִיר
This causative form shows the active removal expressed in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Food and water are supports people depend on, and scripture presents provision as something given or withdrawn.
And when I have broken the staff of your bread, ten women shall bake your bread in one oven, and they shall deliver you your bread again by weight: and ye shall eat, and not be satisfied.These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season.Give us this day our daily bread.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.The verb “shall stay” shares the same root as “stay” in Isaiah 3:1: to lean on or rely. Here support is stripped away; there the remnant no longer leans on the power that struck it, but leans on the LORD.
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