What Does Isaiah 2:18 Mean?
And the nothings he shall wholly pass away.
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
And the idols he shall utterly abolish.THE KEY
The verse casts the idols as something that passes away completely, not as an enduring rival.
THE MEANING
Anything treated as ultimate can seem permanent, yet this verse places idols under a verb of passing away and change. Their claim does not endure before the LORD; what seems fixed can leave the center altogether.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what is worshiped or treated as sacred must therefore possess lasting power.
THE ROOT
יַחֲלֹף
yaḥălōp̄
GROWS FROM
חלף
To pass on, pass away, or change.
“pass away” in this verse is yaḥălōp̄. The verb rendered “abolish” comes from a root whose range includes passing away and changing; with כָּלִיל (kālîl, completely), the verse describes the idols passing away altogether. The root reveals their fate as an ending of their hold and place.
ALSO GROWS
ḥălîp̄āh: A change or turn; used in Job 14:14 for “my change.”
חֲלִיפָה
This branch shows the root’s sense of a state changing; here, the idols’ place does not remain fixed.
ḥălîp̄ôt: Changes or shifts; used in Psalm 55:19 for “changes.”
חֲלִיפוֹת
The same root can name changes over time, illuminating the verse’s image of idols passing out of their apparent permanence.
THE PATTERN
What is treated as divine but cannot endure loses its place before the LORD.
For I will cross through the land of Egypt this night, and I will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments. I am the LORD.And when the men of Ashdod rose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon lay fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the LORD. And they took Dagon, and returned him to his place.So then, as touching the eating of what is slaughtered for idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one.THE THREAD
In that day a man shall throw away his nothings of silver and nothings of gold, which they made for themselves to bow down before, to the moles and to the bats;The next verse repeats אֱלִיל (ʾĕlîl, idol) in a plural construct form and shows the person casting the idols away. It turns the passing-away verb into a visible image: what seemed worthy of worship becomes something discarded.
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