What Does Isaiah 9:18 Mean in the King James?
For wickedness burneth as the fire: it shall devour the briers and thorns, and shall kindle in the thickets of the forest, and they shall mount up like the lifting up of smoke.
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
Wickedness is given the appetite and spread of fire, so the forest’s smoke is the visible measure of what it consumes.
THE MEANING
Here, wickedness has fire’s appetite: it consumes the briers and thorns, then catches the dense thickets around them. Its harm spreads through what is connected to it until the landscape rises as smoke. The smoke makes the loss visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that wickedness stays confined to its first target; it spreads through connected growth and leaves destruction visible at a distance.
THE ROOT
סִבְכֵי
sivkhei
GROWS FROM
סבך
Interweave, entangle; tangled growth.
The word translated “thickets” comes from סבך (savakh), “to interweave or entangle.” The fire reaches the forest’s interlaced growth, so the image shows destruction spreading through the very density of what catches.
ALSO GROWS
sevakh: Thicket; tangled growth.
סְבָךְ
This noun names the dense growth the fire enters.
savakh: To interweave or entangle.
סָבַךְ
The verb reveals the interlaced quality behind the thicket, making the spread through the forest’s growth concrete.
THE PATTERN
A destructive force feeds on what it reaches and spreads through the connected environment around it.
As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire;Even so the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things. Behold, how great a matter a little fire kindleth!For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.THE THREAD
But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the LORD shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.Both verses use עָשָׁן (ʿāshān), “smoke”: in Isaiah it is what the fire leaves behind; in the psalm, the wicked themselves vanish like smoke. The shared word moves from the visible aftermath to the fate of the force that produces it.
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