What Does Isaiah 63:6 Mean in the King James?
And I will tread down the people in mine anger, and make them drunk in my fury, and I will bring down their strength to the earth.
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
Fury first makes its targets drunk, turning their power into disorientation before their strength is brought low.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now in a fierce image of judgment: peoples are trampled, made drunk by anger, and their strength is brought down to earth. Divine fury overwhelms and disables; the text does not soften its violence.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that human strength is self-securing is undone here: even the people’s power can be brought to the ground.
THE ROOT
וַאֲשַׁכְּרֵם
va'ashakk'rem
GROWS FROM
שכר
To be drunk or intoxicated; in this form, to make drunk.
“make them drunk” in this verse is va'ashakk'rem. The root gives the verse’s image its full force: anger does not only strike the peoples; it disorients them. The intoxicated person and the intoxicating drink belong to the same word family, connecting the force acting on them with their loss of balance.
ALSO GROWS
shekhar: Intoxicating drink, strong drink.
שֵׁכָר
The drink belongs to the same root as being made drunk, sharpening the verse’s image of fury as an intoxicating force.
shikkor: Drunk, intoxicated.
שִׁכּוֹר
This names the condition imposed on the peoples: they lose their steadiness before their strength is brought down.
וְאוֹרִיד
ve'orid
GROWS FROM
ירד
To descend or go down; in the causative form, to bring down.
“bring down” in this verse is ve'orid. The ending does not only say that strength disappears: the verb gives its fall a direction, down to the earth. The same root can describe descending and causing something to descend, holding both the fall and the force that imposes it.
ALSO GROWS
yarad: To descend, go down.
יָרַד
This is the basic downward movement behind the verse’s final image.
horid: To bring down, cause to descend.
הוֹרִיד
This causative form clarifies that the strength is actively brought low.
THE PATTERN
Judgment is pictured as a force that overwhelms power and brings it down.
Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.THE THREAD
Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you.Isaiah’s “make them drunk” and Jeremiah’s “be drunken” come from the same Hebrew root, שכר (sh-k-r), meaning to be intoxicated. Jeremiah makes the sequence explicit: drunkenness, then falling, an image Isaiah compresses into this verse.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us