Bible Strands
Isaiah 38:12
My dwelling has been picked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent. I have rolled up my life like a weaver; He cuts me off from the loom; from day until night You make an end of me.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — Hezekiah speaks these words during his terminal illness, addressing God after receiving a death sentence and a promise of fifteen extra years. The utterance occurs between his lament over impending death and his vow of patient endurance until morning.
The words — The text uses נִסַּע (ni.Sa') for "pulled up" and קִפַּדְתִּי (ki.Pad.ti) for "rolled up," drawing on tent-dismantling and weaving imagery to describe bodily dissolution. These verbs literalize the experience of life being abruptly terminated.
The thread — The dismantled tent motif reappears in 2 Corinthians 5:1 as a metaphor for the earthly body's dissolution and the promise of a heavenly dwelling. The rolling garment imagery parallels Hebrews 1:12, which contrasts created transience with divine permanence.
Why it lands — The passage demands recognition that human mortality is not a gradual fading but a decisive divine act. It requires the reader to confront the reality of bodily limits without assuming immediate comfort.
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
Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd’s tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.
Cross-references
- Psalms 73:14 For I am afflicted all day long and punished every morning.
- 2 Corinthians 5:1 For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is dismantled, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.
- Hebrews 1:12 You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed; but You remain the same, and Your years will never end.”
- Job 4:20 They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; unnoticed, they perish forever.
- Job 6:9 that God would be willing to crush me, to unleash His hand and cut me off!
- Job 7:3 So I am allotted months of futility, and nights of misery are appointed to me.
- Job 9:25 My days are swifter than a runner; they flee without seeing good.
- Job 14:2 Like a flower, he comes forth, then withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.
- Job 17:1 “My spirit is broken; my days are extinguished; the grave awaits me.
- Psalms 31:22 In my alarm I said, “I am cut off from Your sight!” But You heard my plea for mercy when I called to You for help.