What Does Isaiah 26:6 Mean?
The foot will trample it, the feet of the bowed ones, the steps of the emptied.
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
The foot shall tread it down, even the feet of the poor, and the steps of the needy.THE KEY
The verse makes the city’s fall bodily: the people pressed lowest become the feet that tread it down.
THE MEANING
The thing that towers over the reader can be brought low enough to lie beneath the feet of the poor. The poor and needy are not scenery in this reversal; their steps mark what has fallen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that poverty means permanent powerlessness: the poor are pictured with their feet on what once stood above them.
THE ROOT
וְתִרְמְסֶנָּה
wə-tirməsennāh
GROWS FROM
רמס
רמס (r-m-s): to trample, tread down.
“trample it” in this verse is wə-tirməsennāh. English “tread down” can sound like a general victory, but רמס names pressure applied by feet to what lies beneath them. The poor and needy are not merely present when the city falls: the verse puts their feet on the fallen thing.
ALSO GROWS
rōmēs: one who tramples
רֹמֵס
The active form keeps the action attached to the one doing it; here, the verse places that action in the feet of the poor.
mirmās: a place trodden underfoot; trampling
מִרְמָס
This noun names the ground as something underfoot, echoing the verse’s repeated focus on foot, feet, and steps.
פַּעֲמֵי
paʿamei
GROWS FROM
פעם
פעם (p-ʿ-m): to strike or beat; as a noun, a beat, step, or occasion.
“the steps of” in this verse is paʿamei. The word for steps belongs to a root that also counts beats and occasions. The needy’s steps read as repeated beats of pressure, not a single symbolic footfall.
ALSO GROWS
paʿam: a time, occasion, or step
פַּעַם
One word can mark either a counted occasion or a footfall, linking movement across the ground with repeated measure.
peʿamim: times, occasions, or steps
פְּעָמִים
The plural carries the sense of recurrence, illuminating the needy’s steps as a continuing tread.
THE PATTERN
When the high are brought down, the lowly gain ground and possession.
He raises the bowed one from the dust, and lifts the one in want from the ash heap;He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.But the bowed ones will inherit the land, and they will soften themselves in the abundance of wholeness.THE THREAD
On the lion and the adder you tread; the young lion and the serpent you trample.The Hebrew verb translated “trample” here shares the root רמס (r-m-s, “trample”) with Isaiah’s “tread it down.” Isaiah places that posture in the feet of the poor and needy, making their position in the reversal impossible to miss.
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