Isaiah 28:24

Study note

Setting — God addresses the people of Judah and Jerusalem, commanding them to listen and pay attention to His voice. The verse functions as a rhetorical question within a broader discourse that uses agricultural cycles to frame divine action.

The words — חֹרֵשׁ (choresh) translates to "plowman," and יַחֲרֹשׁ (yaḥarosh) means "does he plow." These terms anchor the text's inquiry into whether the farmer labors continuously or works with deliberate intervals.

The thread — The motif of breaking ground appears in Jeremiah 4:3, where God commands Judah to break up unplowed ground, and Hosea 10:11 depicts a heifer trained for threshing under a yoke. These passages reuse the same agricultural vocabulary to describe covenant response and discipline.

Why it lands — The text requires the reader to observe that purposeful work follows a measured rhythm rather than unceasing activity. It asks the reader to recognize that divine timing operates through deliberate phases of preparation and planting.

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.