What Does Isaiah 10:6 Mean?
I will send him against a soiled nation, and against the people of my overflow I will charge him, to take the spoil and to take the prey, and to trample them like the mire of the streets.
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
I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.THE KEY
The Hebrew drives the commission like a drumbeat, “plunder plunder, loot loot”, inside the same sentence that says this power is sent.
THE MEANING
A people can stand under a power described as divinely commissioned even while its assignment is seizure and trampling. The verse leaves the violence visible: the assailant takes, pursues prey, and crushes the people like mire in the streets.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Being sent by God makes conquest gentle or bloodless. The verse names the assignment as seizure and trampling, without diminishing the harm.
THE ROOT
אֲשַׁלְּחֶנּוּ
ʾashalleḥennû
GROWS FROM
שלח
sh-l-ḥ
Send forth, send away, release, or stretch out.
“send” in this verse is ʾashalleḥennû. The same three consonants shape the words for sending and sending away or releasing. Here, the outward movement carries coercive force: a power is sent toward a people under an explicit order.
ALSO GROWS
shalach: Send, send away, release.
שָׁלַח
This is the root behind “I will send him”; the verse describes a power launched toward its target.
Shiloach: Sent; the name associated with the sent waters.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name preserves the same idea of being sent forth, while this verse directs that movement toward invasion.
שָׁלָל
shalal
GROWS FROM
שלל
sh-l-l
Plunder or booty; to strip away by plundering.
“spoil” in this verse is shalal. The Hebrew pairs the verb and noun from this root: לִשְׁלֹל שָׁלָל (lishlol shalal), “to plunder plunder.” The repeated root makes seizure ring out as the assignment itself.
ALSO GROWS
lishlol: To plunder.
לִשְׁלֹל
This verb stands immediately before the matching noun, tying the action directly to its spoils.
shalal: Plunder, spoil, or booty.
שָׁלָל
The noun repeats the verb’s root, making the seized goods as explicit as the act of seizure.
בַּז
baz
GROWS FROM
בזז
b-z-z
To plunder or loot.
“prey” in this verse is baz. The phrase לָבֹז בַּז (lavoz baz) repeats this root too: “to loot loot.” Beside “to plunder plunder,” it creates a paired, emphatic description of pillage.
ALSO GROWS
lavoz: To loot or plunder.
לָבֹז
This is the action word paired with “prey” from the same root.
baz: Loot, plunder, or spoil.
בַּז
Its root repetition with the verb makes the taking concrete and insistent.
THE PATTERN
A power can serve a larger judgment while its own intent remains destructive.
And he does not plan so, nor is his heart like it, but in his heart is to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few.For, behold, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hurrying nation, which goes across the wide places of the land, to seize the tents that are not theirs.This one, handed over by the marked-out counsel and foreknowing of God, you nailed to the cross by the hands of the unbounded, and you killed him.THE THREAD
And he does not plan so, nor is his heart like it, but in his heart is to destroy, and to cut off nations not a few.The next verse opens the tension inside the commission: the power sent against the people does not share the purpose behind its sending. Its own heart is set on destruction, so the assignment does not erase the violence of its intent.
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