What Does Isaiah 28:22 Mean?
Now then, do not mock, lest your bonds grow strong, for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a running out and a cutting determined upon the whole earth.
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
Now therefore be ye not mockers, lest your bands be made strong: for I have heard from the Lord GOD of hosts a consumption, even determined upon the whole earth.THE KEY
Mockery is not an escape from restraint; it is where the bonds tighten.
THE MEANING
Contempt for the warning does not loosen the restraints already around you; the verse says they grow stronger. It names a consuming decree across the whole earth, refusing to shrink the consequence into something small or private.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that ridicule puts you beyond a warning’s reach; here, contempt leaves the bonds stronger and the decree still stands.
THE ROOT
מוֹסְרֵיכֶם
mosreikhem
GROWS FROM
אָסַר
ʾāsar
to bind, tie, or restrain
The word for “bands” belongs to the verb “bind”: the warning is that restraints grow firmer. The root keeps the action of binding audible inside the image of the bonds.
ALSO GROWS
ʾāsîr: prisoner, captive
אָסִיר
The captive is the person held by the binding.
ʾāsûr: bound, restrained
אָסוּר
This names the condition the bonds create.
יֶחְזְקוּ
yeḥzequ
GROWS FROM
חָזַק
ḥāzaq
to be strong, grow firm, or strengthen
“grow strong” in this verse is yeḥzequ. The bonds do not merely remain; they grow stronger. The root makes the warning’s mechanism plain: scoffing accompanies an increase in the restraint’s hold.
ALSO GROWS
ḥāzāq: strong, firm
חָזָק
It names the strength the bonds gain.
heḥĕzîq: strengthened, held fast
הֶחֱזִיק
This form carries the sense of making firm or maintaining a hold.
תִּתְלוֹצָצוּ
titlotzatsu
GROWS FROM
לוּץ
lûts
to mock or scoff
“do not mock” in this verse is titlotzatsu. The verse names scoffing as the posture linked to stronger bonds. In Proverbs, this same root appears both in the word for a scorner and in the word for scorning.
ALSO GROWS
lēṣ: scorner, scoffer
לֵץ
The root names the person who takes up the posture of contempt.
lāṣôn: scorn, mockery
לָצוֹן
This names the act or expression of that contempt.
THE PATTERN
Ridiculing a warning does not cancel its consequence; refusal hardens into a condition that ends in judgment.
A man often reproved who stiffens his neck is broken suddenly, and there is no healing.But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the burning of the LORD's anger rose against his people, until there was no healing.But the heavens and the earth that now are, by the same word are stored up and kept for fire against the day of judgment and the perishing of humankind without awe.THE THREAD
How long, you open ones, do you cling to your openness? And the scorners desire their mockery, and fools hate knowledge?The Hebrew לֵצִים (lēṣîm, “scorners”) and לָצוֹן (lāṣôn, “scorning”) share the root לוּץ (lûts, “mock or scoff”). Isaiah shows where that posture leads: the bonds grow stronger.
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