What Does Isaiah 58:11 Mean in the King James?
And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.
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 spring’s waters do not merely endure: the Hebrew verb יְכַזְּבוּ (yekazzevu, “fail” or “prove false”) says they never betray the life depending on them.
THE MEANING
The LORD guides you continually; your living soul is satisfied even in parched places, and your bones are strengthened. You are pictured as a watered garden and an unfailing spring: dryness does not make the source disappear.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that present dryness proves you are cut off from guidance or provision; the verse places continuing nourishment within the drought itself.
THE ROOT
לֹא יְכַזְּבוּ
lo yekazzevu
GROWS FROM
כזב
k-z-b
To lie, prove false, or fail.
“fail not” in this verse is lo yekazzevu. The spring’s waters are described with a word that can mean “lie” or “prove false.” The image promises that this source does not betray its promise of life.
ALSO GROWS
kazav: To lie, prove false, or fail.
כָּזַב
This verb’s range lets “fail not” carry the sense that the waters do not prove false.
kazav: Falsehood; a lie.
כָּזָב
The related noun makes the image sharper: these waters do not turn out to be an illusion or false promise.
נַפְשֶׁךָ
nafshekha
GROWS FROM
נפש
n-p-sh
The word-family includes the living self and the verb “to refresh oneself.”
English “soul” can sound like a part detached from the person. Here nephesh names the living self being satisfied, while the same root also forms a verb for being refreshed.
ALSO GROWS
nephesh: Living soul; the self or life of a person.
נֶפֶשׁ
This is the word Isaiah uses for the life satisfied in the drought.
naphash: To refresh oneself or regain strength.
נָפַשׁ
This same-root verb echoes the renewal pictured in the satisfied living self.
מוֹצָא
motsaʾ
GROWS FROM
יצא
y-ts-ʾ
To go out or come forth.
The word for the spring is built from a root of going out and coming forth. The image is of water continually emerging, not a pool that merely sits in reserve.
ALSO GROWS
yatsaʾ: To go out or come forth.
יָצָא
The root’s movement gives the spring its sense of water coming out into the world.
motsaʾ: An outlet or point of going out; here, a spring or source.
מוֹצָא
The verse names the flowing source with a word that carries the idea of an outlet.
THE PATTERN
Life receiving God’s provision remains fruitful through heat and becomes a source from which life flows outward.
For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.THE THREAD
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.Isaiah’s “soul” and Genesis’s “living soul” are both נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh). The water reaches the living self, the whole person named by the word, not an isolated inner part.
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