What Does Isaiah 60:22 Mean in the King James?
A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation: I the LORD will hasten it in his time.
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 smallness is not the ending: its appointed time is when it becomes abundance, and the LORD hastens that arrival.
THE MEANING
What is small before you is not the measure of what it can become: the little one becomes a thousand, and the small one a strong nation. Its time is appointed, yet the LORD can hasten its arrival when that time comes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that being small now proves you will remain insignificant.
THE ROOT
הַקָּטֹן
haqqāṭōn
GROWS FROM
קטנ
q-ṭ-n
To be small or become less.
“little one” in this verse is haqqāṭōn. The Hebrew calls the person small, then gives that same smallness a future of a thousand. The root names a present measure, not a final limit.
ALSO GROWS
qāṭan: To be or become small.
קָטַן
The root can name a state of smallness, while Isaiah shows that state giving way to expansion.
qāṭōntî: I am small or diminished.
קָטֹנְתִּי
This form voices personal smallness; Isaiah sets that smallness inside a future larger than it.
עָצוּם
ʿāṣûm
GROWS FROM
עצם
ʿ-ṣ-m
To grow strong or numerous; the related noun can mean bone or substance.
The word for the strong nation can also carry the sense of being numerous, so strength here includes both force and abundance. The verse pairs a thousand with a people substantial enough to endure.
ALSO GROWS
ʿāṣam: To grow mighty or numerous.
עָצַם
This verbal form makes the nation’s strength a growth into might and multitude.
ʿeṣem: Bone, substance, or body.
עֶצֶם
This related form brings a sense of substance beneath the nation’s visible strength.
THE PATTERN
A small beginning does not set the limit of what can emerge in its appointed time.
Though thy beginning was small, yet thy latter end should greatly increase.For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.THE THREAD
For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.Zechariah’s “small things” and Isaiah’s “little one” share the Hebrew root קטנ (q-ṭ-n), meaning to be small. In Isaiah the small becomes a thousand; together, the verses show smallness as a stage in a movement, not the whole measure of the outcome.
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