What Does Isaiah 38:12 Mean in the King James?
Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.
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 verb translated “make an end” shares שׁלם (sh-l-m) with שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness), holding completion and the ending of a life within one Hebrew root.
THE MEANING
When sickness closes in, time can feel like a tent struck in an instant and a life cut from the loom. The verse lets the accusation stay direct: from day through night, God is addressed as the one bringing the speaker to an end.
THE ROOT
תַּשְׁלִימֵנִי
tashlimeni
GROWS FROM
שׁלם
sh-l-m
Be whole or complete; bring to completion.
“make an end” in this verse is tashlimeni. The verb carries the force of bringing something to completion, and here that completion is the life being ended. The same root names wholeness in shalom, placing finality and wholeness within one Hebrew word-family.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness, well-being.
שָׁלוֹם
It shares the root of the verse’s word for ending, revealing a connection between completion and wholeness beneath the English.
shalem: Whole, complete.
שָׁלֵם
It shows the root’s sense of completion in a word English renders as “perfect” or “whole.”
shillem: Repay, make good.
שִׁלֵּם
It carries the root’s sense of bringing something to a completed reckoning.
נִסַּע
nissaʿ
GROWS FROM
נסע
n-s-ʿ
Pull up, set out, journey.
“departed” in this verse is nissaʿ. The age does not merely pass: the Hebrew pictures it as pulled up, like a camp struck and carried away. The shepherd’s tent makes that movement visible, the life that sheltered someone is suddenly gone.
ALSO GROWS
nasaʿ: Set out, travel, journey.
נָסַע
It gives “departed” the sense of movement away, as if the age has begun its journey from the speaker.
nissaʿ: Be pulled up, set out, depart.
נִסַּע
This form makes the tent image immediate: the age is lifted away like a camp being struck.
THE PATTERN
Human life is pictured as a bounded span that can be swiftly drawn to its end.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.THE THREAD
Let your heart therefore be perfect with the LORD our God, to walk in his statutes, and to keep his commandments, as at this day.The Hebrew word rendered “make an end” in Isaiah shares the root שלם (sh-l-m) with “perfect” in this verse, where the word means whole or complete. One root holds both the speaker’s life brought to its close and a heart described as whole.
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