What Does Isaiah 36:17 Mean in the King James?
Until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards.
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 promised abundance comes from the same voice that claims the power to take you away.
THE MEANING
The list of grain, wine, bread, and vineyards makes removal sound like a generous exchange. But the speaker still decides who is taken and where they go. The verse exposes how a promise of provision can make coercion sound livable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a comfortable destination makes forced removal a gift; abundance does not erase the threat.
THE ROOT
וְלָקַחְתִּי
welaqachti
GROWS FROM
לקח
laqach
To take or receive.
“take” in this verse is welaqachti. The root itself names taking; the surrounding words give this taking its coercive shape: one voice chooses both the removal and the destination. Its branches make taking tangible as something grasped and lifted, and as instruction received into the mind.
ALSO GROWS
leqach: Instruction, teaching
לֶקַח
Instruction is something received; here, the promise also tries to shape how the hearers understand being taken away.
melqachayim: Tongs
מֶלְקָחַיִם
Tongs grasp and lift something into another’s control, making the physical force of taking easier to see.
THE PATTERN
An offer of safety or abundance can conceal the surrender it requires.
Hearken not to Hezekiah: for thus saith the king of Assyria, Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me: and eat ye every one of his vine, and every one of his fig tree, and drink ye every one the waters of his own cistern;And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.Because, even because they have seduced my people, saying, Peace; and there was no peace; and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with untempered morter:THE THREAD
For she did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal.The same Hebrew words appear for grain, דָּגָן (dagan), and wine, תִּירוֹשׁ (tirosh). Here those crops are named as gifts whose giver is misrecognized, opening Isaiah’s promise to a sharper question: abundance can be real while the claim made around it remains suspect.
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