What Does Isaiah 49:15 Mean in the King James?
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.
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 compassion shares its root with the word for womb, so the verse pictures care as life held close, and says even that bond’s failure cannot make God forget you.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks to you where care has failed: a mother may forget, but God does not forget you. Human abandonment does not define whether you remain held in divine remembrance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
When the person who should hold me forgets me, I am forgotten by God too.
THE ROOT
תְרַחֵם
terachem
GROWS FROM
רחם
racham
Womb; the root also carries the sense of tender compassion.
The Hebrew word for compassion belongs to the same root as the word for womb. Compassion here is more than a feeling: it is care pictured as life held close, and God’s promise remains even when the strongest human bond is imagined failing.
ALSO GROWS
rechem: Womb.
רֶחֶם
This is the bodily image beneath the verse’s phrase “son of her womb,” linking compassion with the place where life is carried.
rachamim: Compassion; tender mercies.
רַחֲמִים
This noun carries the same root into the language of compassion, showing that the verse’s two images share one Hebrew seed.
rachum: Compassionate; tender.
רַחוּם
This word describes the quality of compassion that the verse says remains even when a human mother might forget.
THE PATTERN
When human bonds fail, God’s presence remains.
When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.THE THREAD
Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him.Isaiah’s verb for compassion and the Psalm’s “pitieth” share the root that also names the womb. The same tenderness appears through a mother’s image in Isaiah and a father’s image in the Psalm.
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