Bible Strands
Isaiah 24:10
The city of chaos is shattered; every house is closed to entry.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Isaiah pronounces this oracle to Judah amid a period of comprehensive divine judgment, depicting the immediate collapse of civil order. The prophet addresses a society whose communal worship and daily life have turned to bitterness.
The words — תֹּהוּ (Tohu) literally means "formlessness" or "chaos," and סֻגַּר (suggar) means "it has been shut up." These terms describe the city’s physical ruin and total exclusion of outsiders.
The thread — The shattered city motif parallels the linguistic confusion at Genesis 11:9 and the prophetic declaration over Rev 18:2 and Rev 17:5.
Why it lands — The text states that human structures built on rebellion end in isolation and ruin. It requires the reader to abandon trust in collapsing worldly systems and recognize the finality of divine judgment.
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
The city of confusion is broken down: every house is shut up, that no man may come in.
Cross-references
- Revelation 18:2 And he cried out in a mighty voice: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a lair for demons and a haunt for every unclean spirit, every unclean bird, and every detestable beast.
- Revelation 17:5 And on her forehead a mysterious name was written: BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
- Genesis 11:9 That is why it is called Babel, for there the LORD confused the language of the whole world, and from that place the LORD scattered them over the face of all the earth.
- 2 Kings 25:4 Then the city was breached; and though the Chaldeans had surrounded the city, all the men of war fled by night by way of the gate between the two walls near the king’s garden. They headed toward the Arabah,
- 2 Kings 25:9 He burned down the house of the LORD, the royal palace, and all the houses of Jerusalem—every significant building.
- Isaiah 23:1 This is the burden against Tyre: Wail, O ships of Tarshish, for Tyre is laid waste, without house or harbor. Word has reached them from the land of Cyprus.
- Isaiah 24:12 The city is left in ruins; its gate is reduced to rubble.
- Isaiah 25:2 Indeed, You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin. The fortress of strangers is a city no more; it will never be rebuilt.
- Isaiah 27:10 For the fortified city lies deserted—a homestead abandoned, a wilderness forsaken. There the calves graze, and there they lie down; they strip its branches bare.
- Isaiah 32:14 For the palace will be forsaken, the busy city abandoned. The hill and the watchtower will become caves forever—the delight of wild donkeys and a pasture for flocks—