What Does Isaiah 32:12 Mean in the King James?
They shall lament for the teats, for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine.
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 treats the loss of bodily nourishment and the land’s fruitfulness as one grief.
THE MEANING
Grief reaches what nourishes the body, what makes the fields desirable, and what bears fruit. The verse gives that loss concrete form in breasts, fields, and vine. Its lament names what is missing without disguising the loss.
THE ROOT
סֹפְדִים
sofedim
GROWS FROM
ספד
to mourn, wail, or lament
The root names enacted mourning, not a private label for sadness: the people lament over what has vanished. Its noun branch מִסְפֵּד (misped, “lamentation”) appears in Amos 5:16, where lament fills the streets, carrying grief into public life.
ALSO GROWS
sofed: a mourner; one who laments
סֹפֵד
The verse’s form names people actively mourning, making grief something voiced over their losses.
misped: lamentation, mourning
מִסְפֵּד
This noun appears in Amos 5:16, where lament is heard in the streets as well as among those who work the land.
חֶמֶד
ḥemed
GROWS FROM
חמד
to desire, find precious, or take delight in
The fields are called desirable or precious, not merely pleasant to look at. This root lets the phrase hold both the fields’ abundance and the attachment that makes their loss grievous.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāmad: to desire, covet, or take delight in
חָמַד
The root’s sense of desire shows why these fields are mourned as something precious.
maḥmad: a desirable thing, a treasure
מַחְמָד
The word’s sense of something treasured sharpens what is at stake in the lament over the fields.
THE PATTERN
When nourishment and fruitfulness collapse, grief is voiced through both the body and the land.
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.For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.THE THREAD
Therefore the LORD, the God of hosts, the Lord, saith thus; Wailing shall be in all streets; and they shall say in all the highways, Alas! alas! and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.Isaiah’s סֹפְדִים (sofedim, “they lament”) and Amos’s מִסְפֵּד (misped, “lamentation”) share the root ספד, to mourn. Amos opens the scene further: grief over loss spreads from the fields into the streets.
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