What Does Isaiah 1:22 Mean?
Your silver has become slag; your wine is mixed with water.
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
Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:THE KEY
The verse exposes dilution as a change in what a thing is, not a harmless addition.
THE MEANING
The verse names a present condition: what is precious has become waste, and what should be potent has been thinned. It speaks to the reader wherever degradation reaches the substance itself and dilution changes what the mixture can offer. The loss is real and visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that something keeps its full integrity simply because its original name remains.
THE ROOT
הָיוּ
hāyû
GROWS FROM
ה-י-ה
h-y-h
To be, become, or come to be.
הָיוּ (hāyû, “have become”) comes from היה (h-y-h, “be, become”), the same root that forms אֶהְיֶה (ehyeh, “I am / I will be”). The silver has come to be dross: the damage reaches its state of being, not only its surface.
ALSO GROWS
hayah: To be, become.
הָיָה
This form shows the root’s movement between being and becoming, which makes the silver’s change of state explicit.
ehyeh: I am; I will be.
אֶהְיֶה
The same root carries the sense of being into this self-naming; here it describes silver that has become dross.
מָהוּל
mahul
GROWS FROM
מ-ה-ל
m-h-l
To mix or dilute.
“mixed” in this verse is mahul. The root gives the wine a condition produced by mixture: it is diluted with מַיִם (mayim, “water”), not merely placed beside it. In this verse, mixing thins the wine’s potency rather than adding fullness.
ALSO GROWS
mahal: To mix, mingle, or dilute.
מָהַל
The verbal form names the action that changes the wine’s strength.
mahul: Mixed or diluted.
מָהוּל
This form names the resulting condition of the wine in the verse.
THE PATTERN
When valuable substance is degraded or thinned, its condition becomes visible through separation and testing.
Scrape the dross from the silver, and a vessel comes out for the smelter.Each one's work will be made visible, for the day will show it, because it is uncovered in fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is.THE THREAD
Scrape the dross from the silver, and a vessel comes out for the smelter.The same Hebrew noun סִיג (sîg, “dross”) appears in both verses. Isaiah names silver that has become dross; Proverbs pictures dross removed so a vessel can emerge, showing what separation can uncover.
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