What Does Isaiah 33:4 Mean in the King James?
And your spoil shall be gathered like the gathering of the caterpiller: as the running to and fro of locusts shall he run upon them.
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 spoil is gathered like a devourer consumes a field: what one force has taken becomes a swarm’s harvest.
THE MEANING
The image is of a forceful, almost uncountable stripping: wealth held as spoil is swept up like a field by locusts. What has been gathered does not become secure simply because it is now in someone else’s hands.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that what has been taken and stored becomes safe once it is possessed.
THE ROOT
הֶחָסִיל
heḥāsîl
GROWS FROM
חסל
ḥ-s-l
Consume, eat away, finish off.
The word rendered “caterpiller” names a devouring locust, from a root associated with consuming and finishing off. The English insect label hides the action packed into the Hebrew name: a force that strips what it reaches.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāsal: To consume or finish off.
חָסַל
This verbal root gives the insect’s name its force: it is defined by what it does to a field.
ḥāsîl: A locust, rendered “caterpiller” in the KJV.
חָסִיל
The noun turns the gathering into a picture of a consuming swarm, rather than a single harmless garden insect.
וְאָסַף
wəʾāsaph
GROWS FROM
אסף
ʾ-s-p
Gather, collect, bring in.
“gathered” in this verse is wəʾāsaph. The Hebrew repeats this root in the verb and the following word for “gathering,” giving the line the sound of “gather, a gathering.” The root also describes bringing in a harvest, so the spoil is pictured as a crop taken in by a swarm.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsaph: To gather, collect, or bring together.
אָסַף
The verb and its repeated form in this verse make the taking feel concentrated and emphatic.
ʾāsîf: The gathering in of a harvest.
אָסִיף
This harvest branch sharpens the image: the spoil is gathered in as though it were a field’s yield.
THE PATTERN
What is amassed as gain can be taken away in a sudden reversal.
He hath swallowed down riches, and he shall vomit them up again: God shall cast them out of his belly.But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,THE THREAD
And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.The same Hebrew root, אסף (ʾāsaph, gather or collect), appears in both verses. Here it gathers spoil for stripping; there it gathers scattered people, showing that the root names the gathering while its object reveals what that gathering means.
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