A Word Used Only Once, for a Sign Given Only Once

2 Kings 19:29 · Rare or unique word · 2026-07-26

וְ זֶה לְּךָ֣ הָ אֹ֔ות אָכֹ֤ול הַ שָּׁנָה֙ סָפִ֔יחַ וּ בַ שָּׁנָ֥ה הַ שֵּׁנִ֖ית סָחִ֑ישׁ וּ בַ שָּׁנָ֣ה הַ שְּׁלִישִׁ֗ית זִרְע֧וּ וְ קִצְר֛וּ וְ נִטְע֥וּ כְרָמִ֖ים וְ אִכְל֥וּ פִרְיָֽם

u-va-shanah ha-shenit sachish

And this shall be a sign unto thee, Ye shall eat this year such things as grow of themselves, and in the second year that which springeth of the same; and in the third year sow ye, and reap, and plant vineyards, and eat the fruits thereof.

The English reader glides past this as ordinary agricultural detail — grain grows wild one year, then a lesser harvest the next, then full farming resumes. Nothing seems to hinge on the phrasing.

The word translated 'that which springeth of the same' is *sachish* — and this is the only time it appears anywhere in the Hebrew Bible. Hebrew had ordinary words for aftergrowth, for volunteer crops, for a second-year yield. The writer reached instead for a word so rare that its precise nuance is now debated by scholars, recoverable only from context. It names the middling harvest of year two, sandwiched between year one's wild growth (*saphiach*) and year three's full replanting.

A common word would have done the job of conveying 'second-year produce.' The choice of a term this singular slows the reader down and marks the year it names as its own distinct thing — not simply 'more of the same' as year one, nor yet the restored normalcy of year three, but a hinge-point with no other word fit to hold it. The sign Isaiah gives Hezekiah is itself structured in three unrepeatable stages, and the language mirrors that structure: each stage gets language calibrated to its singularity.

This is a sign about a siege being lifted and land being restored after Assyria's devastation — and God gives it not as a vague promise but as a three-year timetable, precise enough that a rare word is spent on just the middle year. The God who speaks through Isaiah does not deal in generalities when His people are afraid. He specifies. He accounts for the awkward middle season — the one that is neither disaster nor full restoration — and gives it its own name, because He intends to walk His people through it, not just past it. A vocabulary this exact is the fingerprint of a God who has not lost track of the calendar of your recovery.

Today

Name, specifically, what 'year two' looks like in whatever hard season you're in — not full restoration yet, but no longer wild survival either — and thank God by name for that exact middle stage.