What Does Isaiah 3:11 Mean?
Woe to the wicked! It shall be ill with him, for the repayment of his hands shall be done to him.
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
Woe unto the wicked! it shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.THE KEY
The hands shape the recompense that returns to them.
THE MEANING
The verse sets a severe reciprocity before you now: the harm of the wicked returns to him as the due of his own hands. What reaches him bears the mark of what his hands have done.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that wrongdoing can be hidden away and leave its maker untouched: what the hands do comes back as their recompense.
THE ROOT
גְּמוּל
gemul
GROWS FROM
גמל
G-M-L
To deal fully, requite, or render what is due.
“repayment” in this verse is gemul. גְּמוּל (gemul, recompense) can name what is rendered back, whether good or ill. The verse ties what reaches the wicked to what his hands have done: the return carries the shape of the action.
ALSO GROWS
gāmal: To deal with, requite, or repay.
גָּמַל
This verb names the act of rendering treatment back, tying recompense to what the hands have done.
gemul: Recompense; what is rendered.
גְּמוּל
Psalm 28:4 uses this noun for the “desert” rendered according to the work of people’s hands, making the same hand-to-return link explicit.
THE PATTERN
What a person sets in motion returns to that person in a form shaped by the act.
His toil turns back upon his head, and his violence comes down upon his skull.Whoever digs a pit falls into it; whoever rolls a stone, it turns back upon him.Do not be led astray. God is not sneered at. For whatever a person sows, that also he reaps.THE THREAD
Give them according to their deeds, and according to the breaking of their doings. Give them according to the work of their hands; turn back upon them their due.The shared Hebrew word גְּמוּל (gemul, recompense) appears in Isaiah as “reward” and in this Psalm as “desert.” The Psalm makes the connection visible: what is rendered to them is measured against the work of their hands.
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