What Does Zechariah 9:5 Mean?
Ashkelon will see it and fear. Gaza will writhe greatly, and Ekron too, for her waiting will be shamed. The king will perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon will not be settled.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Ashkelon shall see it, and fear; Gaza also shall see it, and be very sorrowful, and Ekron; for her expectation shall be ashamed; and the king shall perish from Gaza, and Ashkelon shall not be inhabited.THE KEY
What the verse calls Ashkelon’s “expectation” is literally her gaze: the future she looks toward collapses as the devastation comes into view.
THE MEANING
As the devastation ahead comes into view, the threatened cities recoil in fear and anguish, and the future Gaza was looking toward fails. A king disappears from Gaza, and Ashkelon is left without inhabitants; the verse holds the violence and the loss plainly.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a city’s ruler can secure its future is undone here: Gaza loses its king, and Ashkelon loses its inhabitants.
THE ROOT
מַבָּטָהּ
mabbāṭāh
GROWS FROM
נבט
to look intently, gaze, regard
“waiting” in this verse is mabbāṭāh. The word rendered “expectation” is built from the language of looking: it is her gaze, what she has fixed her eyes on. The verse joins seeing the devastation with the collapse of the future she had been watching for.
ALSO GROWS
habbiṭū: look, regard
הַבִּיטוּ
This form shows the root’s direct sense of looking, echoing the cities that see what is coming.
mabbāṭ: a look, regard; expectation
מַבָּט
This is the noun behind “her expectation,” revealing anticipation as the future held in one’s gaze.
וַתִּירָא
vattīrāʾ
GROWS FROM
ירא
to fear, dread; in other contexts, to stand in awe
This word family can name terror or awe; here the cities’ response is dread as calamity comes into sight. The fear belongs to the verse’s concrete scene of threatened cities and loss.
ALSO GROWS
yārēʾ: to fear, stand in dread
יָרֵא
It shares the verse’s sense of fear in the face of danger.
yirʾāh: fear, dread, or awe
יִרְאָה
The noun shows the range of the same root, while this passage clearly places the cities in dread.
אָבַד
ʾābad
GROWS FROM
אבד
to be lost, perish, vanish
“perish” in this verse is ʾābad. The king’s fate is expressed as loss and disappearance: he perishes from Gaza. Beside Ashkelon’s emptying, the root makes the political and civic loss impossible to miss.
ALSO GROWS
ʾăvēdāh: a lost thing
אֲבֵדָה
This noun carries the same root’s sense of something gone or missing.
ʾăvaddōn: destruction, ruin
אֲבַדּוֹן
This form makes explicit the ruin contained in the root used for the king’s perishing.
THE PATTERN
When a city’s collapse becomes visible, those who witness it tremble, and its apparent permanence proves fragile.
Thus says the Lord GOD to Tyre, Shall not the coastlands quake at the sound of your fall, when the pierced groan, when slaughter multiplies in your midst?Standing far off for the fear of her scourging, saying, Woe, woe, the great city Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.THE THREAD
O enemy, the dry places are used up forever; you pluck up the cities, and their remembrance loses the way with them.Both verses use אבד (ʾābad), “perish” or “be lost”: Zechariah says the king perishes from Gaza, and the psalm says the cities’ memorial perishes with them. The psalm extends the loss from a ruler and a city’s habitation to the trace the cities leave behind.
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