What Does Isaiah 1:16 Mean?
Bathe, and become clear. Remove the harm of your deeds from before my eyes. Let go of doing harm.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;THE KEY
The Hebrew ties evil named as a thing to evil enacted as a deed, and says that deed can cease.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now, as the reader’s conduct stands exposed: cleansing means that harmful action is removed from before God’s eyes and its practice ends. The Hebrew repeats the root for evil first as a noun and then as an action, joining what is named with what is done.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Cleansing can be complete while the same harmful practice continues unchanged.
THE ROOT
רֹעַ
roʿa
GROWS FROM
רעע
Be bad; do evil or cause harm.
“harm” in this verse is roʿa. The verse uses this root first for evil as a thing and then for doing evil as an action. English repeats “evil,” while Hebrew links what is named to what is enacted, and the sentence says that enactment can cease.
ALSO GROWS
roʿa: Evil, wickedness.
רֹעַ
This noun names the harm in the reader’s deeds.
hārēaʿ: To do evil; to cause harm.
הָרֵעַ
This verbal form appears in the closing command, tying the named evil to the action that stops.
רַחֲצוּ
raḥăṣû
GROWS FROM
רחץ
Wash or bathe.
“Bathe” in this verse is raḥăṣû. The verse opens with a concrete washing image, then spells out what that cleansing entails: removing evil deeds and ceasing their practice. The root makes the image tangible rather than abstract.
ALSO GROWS
rāḥaṣ: To wash or bathe.
רָחַץ
This is the verb’s basic action, which the verse addresses to the reader.
rəḥīṣāh: Washing; bathing.
רְחִיצָה
This noun carries the same root into the act of washing itself, keeping the verse’s opening image concrete.
THE PATTERN
Cleansing becomes visible as harmful conduct is put away and the way of acting changes.
Turn aside from evil and do good; seek wholeness and pursue it.Send away from you all the rebellions in which you have rebelled, and make for yourselves a new heart and a new breath. For why will you die, house of Israel?THE THREAD
When the Lord has washed away the dung of the daughters of Zion, and has thrust out the blood of Jerusalem from her midst by the breath of judgment, and by the breath of burning.Isaiah 4:4 uses the same Hebrew root רָחַץ (rāḥaṣ, wash) for washing away filth. That image makes the washing in Isaiah 1 tangible: cleansing means removing what is harmful, and the verse names the deeds that must stop.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us