What Does Isaiah 28:11 Mean?
For with stammering lips and another tongue he will speak to this people.
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
For with stammering lips and another tongue will he speak to this people.THE KEY
God’s speech can be present and audible while it lands as a language the hearer cannot recognize.
THE MEANING
God’s voice is present even when its sound reaches the reader as foreign speech. A message can cross the ear without crossing the boundary of understanding. The verse holds speaking and receiving together without making them the same thing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that if God is speaking, the message must sound clear and familiar. Speech can be present while its meaning remains unreceived.
THE ROOT
לַעֲגֵי
la'agei
GROWS FROM
לעג
l-ʿ-g
To mock or deride; in this phrase, speech that sounds foreign or unintelligible.
“stammering lips” in this verse is la'agei. The Hebrew word carries an association with mockery alongside the sound of stammering. The voice is not absent; its sound reaches the hearers as alien, even derisive.
ALSO GROWS
la'ag: To mock or deride.
לָעַג
This verb gives the verse’s strange-sounding speech an edge of mockery.
la'ag: Mockery or derision.
לַעַג
The noun shows how speech can be experienced not as a clear message but as something alien or scornful.
שָׂפָה
safah
GROWS FROM
שפה
sh-p-h
Lip; by extension, language, and an edge or bank.
The same Hebrew word can name a lip, a language, or an edge such as a shore. Here, ‘stammering lips’ and ‘another tongue’ place the voice at the boundary between familiar speech and what the hearer can understand.
ALSO GROWS
sefatayim: Lips.
שְׂפָתַיִם
This plural form names the bodily edge through which speech comes.
sefat hayam: The shore or edge of the sea.
שְׂפַת הַיָּם
The same word pictures a boundary, echoing the limit between familiar and foreign speech.
THE PATTERN
Speech can reach the ear without becoming understandable when it arrives outside the hearer’s language.
The LORD shall lift up a nation against you from far, from the edge of the earth, as the eagle swoops; a nation whose tongue you shall not understand;You will not see a fierce people, a people deep of lip beyond hearing, of a stammering tongue you cannot understand.When this voice arose, the crowd came together and was poured into confusion, because each one heard them speaking in his own tongue.THE THREAD
You will not see a fierce people, a people deep of lip beyond hearing, of a stammering tongue you cannot understand.This verse uses the same Hebrew root, לעג (la’ag), in “stammering tongue.” The echo shows speech so foreign that the hearer cannot make it intelligible.
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