What Does Isaiah 64:10 Mean in the King James?
Thy holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
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
Jerusalem carries the name of wholeness, yet the verse names the city itself as desolate.
THE MEANING
The places marked as sacred can stand empty and stripped bare; the verse names Zion and Jerusalem without softening their ruin. Their names remain, but the life that made them cities is gone.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A sacred name does not guarantee a whole or inhabited place; what bears the name can still be laid waste.
THE ROOT
שְׁמָמָה
shemāmāh
GROWS FROM
שׁ־מ־ם
sh-m-m
To be desolate or devastated; also to be appalled.
This root can describe both a place laid waste and one left appalled. Desolation here joins the ruined landscape with the stunned witness who sees it.
ALSO GROWS
shamem: To be desolate or appalled.
שָׁמֵם
The same root holds the ruined place and the shock that meets it.
meshōmēm: One who devastates or lays waste.
מְשׁוֹמֵם
This branch makes desolation an active force that leaves a place in ruins.
יְרוּשָׁלַיִם
Yerushalayim
GROWS FROM
שׁ־ל־ם
sh-l-m
To be whole, complete, or intact.
“Jerusalem” in this verse is Yerushalayim. Yerushalayim carries the wholeness of שָׁלוֹם (shalom, wholeness). The verse sets that name beside שְׁמָמָה (shemāmāh, desolation): the name remains while the city’s lived wholeness has collapsed.
ALSO GROWS
shalom: Wholeness.
שָׁלוֹם
The city’s name carries this root’s sense of wholeness, making its desolation especially stark.
shalem: Whole or complete.
שָׁלֵם
This branch sharpens the contrast between the city’s name and its ruined condition.
קֹדֶשׁ
qōdesh
GROWS FROM
ק־ד־שׁ
q-d-sh
To set apart.
“holy” in this verse is qōdesh. The cities are still named as set apart even as they become wilderness. Their sacred identity and their visible ruin stand in the same line, without one erasing the other.
ALSO GROWS
qādōsh: Set apart.
קָדוֹשׁ
This word names the distinct identity the verse gives the cities.
qiddēsh: To set apart or consecrate.
קִדֵּשׁ
This verbal branch shows the action behind being set apart, held against the cities’ desolation.
THE PATTERN
A place can keep its sacred name while its lived wholeness is emptied.
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.Therefore shall Zion for your sake be plowed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of the forest.Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.THE THREAD
Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.Isaiah 1:7 uses the same root שׁ־מ־ם (sh-m-m, to be desolate or appalled) for “desolate.” It opens the single word here into a whole landscape of burned cities and land consumed before the reader’s eyes.
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