What Does Isaiah 5:13 Mean in the King James?
Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.
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 translated “knowledge” is דַּעַת (da’at, knowing by encounter), so the verse locates exile in a loss of living recognition.
THE MEANING
The verse names what is true now wherever knowing is absent: a people can be displaced, and neither rank nor numbers can feed or quench them. Displacement, hunger, and thirst stand together as real costs.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that status or sheer numbers make a people secure: the honored are hungry, and the multitude is still thirsty.
THE ROOT
דַּעַת
da'at
GROWS FROM
ידע
To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
דַּעַת (da’at, knowledge) comes from יָדַע (yada, to know or perceive); this is knowing through encounter, not simply possessing facts. The verse names a loss of living recognition as the cause of displacement and deprivation.
ALSO GROWS
yada: To know, recognize, or perceive through encounter.
יָדַע
The noun דַּעַת (da’at, knowledge) grows from this verb, so the lack described here is a loss of recognition, not merely a shortage of information.
yedi'ah: Knowledge, report, or awareness.
יְדִיעָה
This noun shares the root consonants ידע (y-d-ʿ), showing that knowing is a faculty that can be present or absent.
גָּלָה
galah
GROWS FROM
גלה
To uncover or lay bare; in this verse, to go into exile.
“gone into captivity” in this verse is galah. The verb גָּלָה (galah, to go into exile) shares its consonants with forms meaning to uncover or reveal. Displacement carries an echo of exposure: the people are removed from their place and left laid bare.
ALSO GROWS
galah: To be carried away from one’s place and enter exile.
גָּלָה
This is the verse’s verb for the people’s displacement.
gillah: To uncover, expose, or reveal.
גִּלָּה
This form shares all three consonants with the exile verb, placing displacement beside exposure.
כְּבוֹדוֹ
kevodo
GROWS FROM
כבד
To be heavy or weighty; by extension, to carry honor or significance.
The Hebrew expression behind “honourable men” is built from כבד (k-b-d; kaved), the root of heaviness and weight. Those who carry the people’s standing are famished; social weight cannot fill an empty body.
ALSO GROWS
kaved: Heavy or weighty.
כָּבֵד
It shows the concrete sense beneath the word for honor: weight.
kavod: Weight, honor, or significance.
כָּבוֹד
This is the word-family behind the “honourable” ones, linking their standing to the idea of weight.
THE PATTERN
A people’s well-being depends on living reception of what comes from God; when that knowing is absent, the language of hunger and thirst names the loss.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.THE THREAD
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children.Hosea repeats the same root, יָדַע (yada, to know or perceive), placing a community’s collapse where living recognition is absent. Isaiah renders that rupture as exile and thirst; Hosea shows it as destruction.
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