What Does Isaiah 29:21 Mean?
Those who make a human miss the mark by a word, and set a snare for the one who reproves in the gate, and bend the aligned ones aside for emptiness.
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
That make a man an offender for a word, and lay a snare for him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just for a thing of nought.THE KEY
The word that makes a person guilty can itself become the trap that keeps truth from being heard.
THE MEANING
This verse exposes a living mechanism: speech is turned into a charge, the person who names wrongdoing is trapped, and the upright are bent toward emptiness. In this pattern, accusation distorts judgment until telling the truth becomes costly.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a charge becomes true simply because it is attached to someone’s words, or that public rebuke proves the rebuker is guilty.
THE ROOT
מַחֲטִיאֵי
maḥăṭîʾê
GROWS FROM
חטא
miss; go astray
“make a human miss the mark” in this verse is maḥăṭîʾê. The form here is causative: these people make a person miss by a word. The root holds the miss together with the act of causing it, revealing how accusation can be used to distort someone’s standing.
ALSO GROWS
chet: missing
חֵטְא
This branch names the miss itself; Isaiah’s wording makes its cause explicit, a word used to make someone miss.
chatta't: missing; also an offering for the missing
חַטָּאת
This branch keeps the idea of missing concrete, while the verse shows how speech can turn that miss into a charge against someone.
heḥĕṭîʾ: cause to miss
הֶחֱטִיא
This causative form makes the verse’s mechanism plain: a person can be made an offender through the use of a word.
THE PATTERN
Injustice controls judgment by turning truthful speech into grounds for accusation and twisting the upright toward emptiness.
You shall not bend judgment. You shall not recognize faces, nor take a bribe, for the bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the aligned.They hate the one who reproves in the gate, and they recoil from the one who speaks what is whole.Lying in ambush for him, and seeking to hunt something from his mouth, so that they might accuse him.THE THREAD
If you do well, will you not be lifted up? And if you do not do well, falling short crouches at the door. Its reaching is toward you, and you shall rule over it.Genesis uses חַטָּאת (chatta’t, missing) for what lies at the door; Isaiah uses the same root in a causative form, making a person miss through a word. One verse pictures the miss at an entrance, while the other shows speech turning the gate of judgment into a trap.
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