Bible Strands
Isaiah 1:30
For you will become like an oak whose leaves are withered, like a garden without water.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Isaiah pronounces judgment on the people who have found pleasure in idolatrous groves and cultivated shrines. The prophecy addresses Israel’s reliance on pagan rituals and their resulting spiritual exposure.
The words — נֹבֶ֣לֶת (no.Ve.let) translates literally as "withering," and מַ֖יִם (Ma.yim) means "water." The text declares that those who trust in these practices will become like a dying oak and a dry garden.
The thread — This motif of spiritual desiccation appears in Jeremiah 17:5, which curses reliance on human strength, and Isaiah 5:6, which describes land left to become a wasteland. It contrasts with Isaiah 58:11, where divine guidance replaces drought with sustained vitality.
Why it lands — The verse demands recognition that idolatrous devotion yields inevitable decay rather than sustenance. It requires the reader to abandon chosen spiritual substitutes and accept that apart from divine provision, all human cultivation ends in desolation.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
For ye shall be as an oak whose leaf fadeth, and as a garden that hath no water.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 17:5 This is what the LORD says: “Cursed is the man who trusts in mankind, who makes mere flesh his strength and turns his heart from the LORD.
- Isaiah 5:6 I will make it a wasteland, neither pruned nor cultivated, and thorns and briers will grow up. I will command the clouds that rain shall not fall on it.”
- Isaiah 58:11 The LORD will always guide you; He will satisfy you in a sun-scorched land and strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.
- Jeremiah 31:12 They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will be radiant over the bounty of the LORD—the grain, new wine, and oil, and the young of the flocks and herds. Their life will be like a well-watered garden, and never again will they languish.
- Ezekiel 17:9 So you are to tell them that this is what the Lord GOD says: ‘Will it flourish? Will it not be uprooted and stripped of its fruit so that it shrivels? All its foliage will wither! It will not take a strong arm or many people to pull it up by its roots.
- Ezekiel 17:24 Then all the trees of the field will know that I am the LORD. I bring the tall tree down and make the low tree tall. I dry up the green tree and make the withered tree flourish. I, the LORD, have spoken, and I have done it.’”
- Ezekiel 31:4 The waters made it grow; the deep springs made it tall, directing their streams all around its base and sending their channels to all the trees of the field.
- Matthew 21:19 Seeing a fig tree by the road, He went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. “May you never bear fruit again!” He said. And immediately the tree withered.